China’s Foreign Trade And Environmental Pollution

Since 1990s, the debate between trade and environment are increasingly a cause for concern, since 2001, after China’s accession to the WTO, with regard to the impact of trade on environmental research is also increasing. What’s China’s comparative advantage during its participation in international trade? And what kind of impact the comparative advantage of China’s pollution has? On the basis of calculation of China’s exports’comparative advantage and the pollution content of China’s foreign trade, this paper tends to make a preliminary to the elaboration of this issue.In discussing trade and environment issues, the general equilibrium model of trade and environment divided the environmental impact of trade into scale effect, structural effect, technical effect, and gave a theoretical analysis on the impact of various factors, such as, under the same conditions as others, the countries which are more abundant in the capital countries, will have comparative advantage in pollution-intensive industries’production and export, while the countries which are more more labor-abundant, will have comparative advantage in cleaning industry’s production and export. In reality there are also many scholars who have tested, test results do not fit together well. Especially in the foreign trade between developed and developing countries, due to the relatively lax environmental policies in developing countries, they often got comparative advantage in pollution-intensive industries’ production and exports, and became a pollution haven for developed countries. This paper calculates the comparative advantages of China’s exports and the pollution content of foreign trade, tests whether China’s foreign trade in his State assumed a high environmental cost, whether the developing countries has become a pollution haven for the developed countries.The full-text is divided into six chapters. The first part of the Chapter is introduction. The main topics of this chapter are the background and research significance, and make a note on the point of research and innovation. Chapter II is the theoretical foundation and literature review. Theoretical basis majorly introduced the environmental impact of trade on a general equilibrium analysis model, and introduce the differences in environmental policy into the analysis of comparative advantage, use HOV model’s elements of the ideological content of a country to measure the pollution content, which makes bedding for an Empirical Analysis of the post-text; empirical studies articles on the environmental effects of trade, the pollution content of trade and environmental policies’effect on comparative advantage and trade patterns had been summarized and made. ChapterⅢconsists mainly of manufacturing industry in China measured the full intensity of pollution, and thus divide pollution-intensive industries, in this based on the article on China’s trade structure has been refined study. ChapterⅣestimates the pollution content of China’s foreign trade, in which the total pollution content of trade, the average pollution levels, BEET, and PTT were measured respectively. ChapterⅤestimates China and major trading partners-the United States, Japan, Germany’s pollution content of trade, and the average pollution levels, BEET, and PTT were measured, respectively. Chapter VI the conclusions of this paper, in accordance with the calculated conclusions of this article, puts forward some policy recommendations, and future studies may be done.Through theoretical and empirical analysis, the full text made the following conclusions:First, since the implementation of environmental policies and environmental protection technology, the manufacturing industries’pollution coefficients in China decline in varying degrees. China will have the opportunity to make contact with world’s most advanced pollution abatement technology, thus the technical effect produced by trade greatly reduced the pollution coefficients of production.Second, due to the relatively lenient environmental policy and other reasons, China’s foreign trade has a relative comparative advantage in the production and export of contaminated products.Third, assuming that imports and exports with the same factor of production pollution, in the import and export trade with the world, China gradually turned from a pollution surplus country into a deficit country; in the bilateral trade with the United States, Japan, Germany, given the pollution factor of differences in production conditions, our country are pollution deficit country, and the deficit was largely expanded with the United States, Germany; comparison of the gap between total export pollution content share of the total pollution and the export share in industries which the former is larger than the latter, and the gap between import pollution content share of total imports and the import share in industries which the former is larger than the latter, we can see that the United States, Japan, Germany’s export structure to China is relatively more cleaning than china’s export to them; China has assumed a huge environmental costs for them through the foreign trade.Fourth, through the decomposition of BEET into scale effect, structural effect and technical effects, we can see that, in the trade between our country and the world, co-structural effects and economies of scale led to the emergence and expansion of environmental deficit, The technical effect has played a beneficial role in the environment deficit reduction; in the bilateral trade between China and the United States, Japan, and Germany, the scale effect has led the environmental deficit widened, the structural effect reduced the environmental deficit of some pollutants, while the technical effect made the environmental deficit drop significantly. In the bilateral trade with United States and Germany, the scale effect has offseted the structural effect and technical effects, which made the environmental deficit expand in 2006, while in the bilateral trade with Japan, the relatively small scale effect made the environmental deficit decrease over time.Fifth, On the calculation of the pollution terms of trade between China and the United States, Japan, Germany(PTT), we find that China’s exports to these countries are more pollutive than imports, the following industries’PTT are large:textiles, leather and footwear, fabricated metal products, office, accounting & computing machinery, while the technology gap between China and these countries in all sectors is far lower than the corresponding PTT value, which indicates that the relatively high . share of exports and relatively low share of imports are the reason for the relatively pollutive exports to these countries.Overall, China should adhere to the opening up to further and reduce the export share in industry which has a higher pollution coefficient, and make further efforts to increase environmental protection, promote the adoption of clean technologies, setting more stringent environmental policies, establish and improve the environmental taxation system, to further reduce the technological gap between our country and developed countries, to reduce the pollution deficit arising from China’s foreign trade. Reduce the impact on the environment of trade to a minimum while maintaining economic growth.