Study On The Characteristics Of Carbon Emissions And Carbon Transfer In China In An Open Economy

Global warming has ever become a major threat to the survival and development of human society.Monitoring and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,such as carbon dioxide,has become a universal consensus around the world.Benefiting from the economic globalization,China's economy has made remarkably rapid development since the reform and opening up,especially after joining the World Trade Organization.The issue of China's carbon emissions is becoming increasingly serious owing to the large consumption of coal-based fossil energy and the large amount of carbon transfer caused by trade and capital flows.It is of great theoretical and practical significance to clarify the current situation and characteristics of China's carbon emissions and carbon transfer and find out the driving factors of carbon emissions and carbon transfer.Focusing on domestic and foreign production,domestic and foreign demand in an open economy,to comprehensively estimate China's carbon emissions,in-depth analyze the mechanism of final demands,international trade and international investment,and in detail explore the driving factors of carbon emissions and carbon transfer in China,are the necessary prerequisites for clarifying the current situation and characteristics of China's carbon emissions and carbon transfer and also an important issue to realize the transition to a low-carbon economy in China.Focusing on China's domestic carbon emissions,carbon emissions embodied in China's bilateral trade and carbon transfer caused by China's outward foreign direct investment,their characteristics and driving factors were analyzed on the basis of the framework of carbon emissions and carbon transfer in an open economy constructed in this paper.Based on the principle of producer responsibility,China's carbon emissions from energy activities,industrial processes and waste treatments were comprehensively estimated from the perspective of emission sources.And then,based on the principle of consumer responsibility,China's carbon emissions caused by final consumption,capital formation and export were also estimated with the input-output table using the non-competitive imports assumption established in this paper.Based on the model of emissions embodied in bilateral trade,this paper estimated carbon emissions embodied in China's bilateral trade with 219 countries/regions over the period of 2000-2014.In addition,carbon transfer caused by China's outward foreign direct investment to 180 host countries was quantitatively calculated utilizing the input-output model.On the basis of detailed and accurate volume of China's carbon emissions and carbon transfer,industrial distribution characteristics of China's carbon emissions and carbon transfer were analyzed.The influence of international trade on China's carbon emissions was discussed according to the results of net carbon emissions embodied in bilateral trade.Contributions of China's bilateral trade and outward foreign direct investment to global carbon emissions were analyzed under the assumption of non-trade/investment scenario.Finally,the driving factors of carbon emissions caused by final demands,net carbon emissions embodied in bilateral trade and carbon transfer caused by outward foreign direct investment were studied by the weighted structural decomposition method.The results of estimation and analysis indicate that:the growth trend of China's carbon emissions gradually slowed down in the later period of investigation.The bilateral trade made China produce a large amount of carbon emissions for other regions,and the fast-growing carbon transfer caused by outward foreign direct investment should not be ignored.China's bilateral trade increased global carbon emissions by an extremely low degree,and China's outward foreign direct investment contributed to global carbon emission reduction.The energy intensity factor,as well as the energy structure factor,dramatically reduce carbon emissions caused by China's final demand.However,these two factors and the economic structure factor made carbon emissions embodied in China's exports higher than those embodied in China's imports in different degrees due to the gaps of energy intensity,energy structure and economic structure between China and developed countries.