Research On The Impact Of Global Value Chains Participation On Carbon Emissions And Carbon Productivity In China

China's participation in the global value chain?GVC?has brought technological progress and economic growth,while also greatly increasing energy consumption and carbon emissions.Generally,China is at the mid-low end of the GVC,which has resulted in the imbalance between economic benefits and carbon costs and badly influenced the sustainable development of China's economy.Under the background of GVC participation,therefore,how to control the carbon transfer of the developed country and promote China's regional and industrial carbon productivity are key to achieving low carbon transformation of China's economy.The core problems of this thesis are:what are the impact mechanisms of the GVC participation on carbon emissions and carbon productivity?How are the effects?To answer these questions,the thesis first theoretically analyzes the impact mechanism of the GVC participation on China's carbon emissions and its productivity,and constructs a corresponding theoretical model;and then it uses the input-output method to examine the impact of the GVC participation on China's overall and industrial carbon emissions;and finally it empirically tests the impact of the GVC participation on China's carbon productivity.The main findings are as follows:?1?The GVC participation has influenced China's carbon productivity by direct effect and indirect effect?e.g.environmental regulation effect,technology spillover effect and low-locked effect?.Moreover,the GVC participation has promoted China's carbon productivity.The higher proportion that the developed countries transferred high-carbon technologies to the developing countries is,the higher level of carbon emissions in the developing countries would be.The impact of the GVC participation on China's carbon productivity depends not only on the relative environmental tax rates of China and the developed countries,but also on the degree that China absorbed the high-carbon technology and transferred the low carbon technology of the developed countries.?2?The GVC participation has impacted China's carbon emissions.Generally,in the period of 1995-2009,Chinese export countries with the largest embodied carbon were successively America,European Union and Japan,totally accounting for two thirds.Chinese export embodied carbon accounted for 25.56%of the total CO₂emissions at the production side,i.e.nearly a quarter of domestic carbon emissions were generated to meet the needs of foreign intermediates and final consumption,while the import embodied carbon accounted for 7.86%at the consumption side.With respect to the industry structure of China's export embodied carbon,energy industry and heavy manufacturing accounted for a relatively high proportion,from 43.23%and 37.82%in1995 to 59.14%and 27.03%in 2009,among which export embodied carbon in energy industries of?electricity,gas and water production and supply'accounted for the highest,reaching up to 53.82%in 2009.With respect to export embodied emissions of unit domestic added value,although the overall level has been declining,it was still much higher than the global average in the period of 1995-2009,among which export embodied carbon in the industries of?electricity,gas and water production and supply'accounted for the highest.In the view of the change structure decomposition of Chinese manufacturing export embodied carbon,in the period of 1995-2009,China's export embodied carbon emissions have increased by 915.99 million tons,and the crucial influential factors are the energy intensity,export scale,inter-industry front and backward correlations,among which the energy intensity was the primary factor of the decline of China's export embodied emissions,while export scale is the primary factor of the increase of China's export embodied emissions.?3?The GVC participation has impacted Chinese provincial carbon productivity.Chinese provincial carbon productivity as a whole was on the rise and varied greatly in the period of 2000-2015,among which carbon productivity of the whole country and the Midwest areas presented the stage characteristics of?fluctuating change–slow increase–rapid increase'.With regard to the space patterns of Chinese provincial carbon productivity,there existed prominent spatial differences and clustering.The direct effect of GVC participation degree obtained by setting four different spatial weight matrices was significantly positive and the numerical difference was slight,which indicated that increasing provincial GVC participation degree can significantly improve its carbon productivity level,existing significant regional spillover effects.The estimated coefficients of spatial lag variables constructed by the other three weight matrices were all significantly positive except for the geo-distance weight matrix,which showed that increasing the regional GVC participation degree significantly improved the carbon productivity of other regions.With regard to control variables,increasing GDP per capita and energy efficiency can also significantly promote the regional carbon productivity.?4?The GVC participation has impacted Chinese manufacturing carbon productivity.Promoting the GVC participation degree can significantly improve Chinese manufacturing's carbon productivity,among which increasing the GVC participation degree generated by the developing countries and multiple entry cross-border foreign value-added rate played more important roles in improving Chinese manufacturing carbon productivity,which indicated that increasing the GVC associated with the developing countries and deeper GVC participation patterns were more effective in promoting Chinese manufacturing carbon productivity.We also found an inverted-U relationship between GVC position and Chinese manufacturing's carbon productivity.Specifically,only when Chinese manufacturing position was upgraded to a higher status,could Chinese manufacturing carbon productivity be increased.Only when Chinese manufacturing transformed technology upgrade and product upgrade to function upgrade and chain upgrade,intermediate processing link to marketing service link,to achieve a?qualitative'leap,can increasing the GVC significantly promote Chinese manufacturing carbon productivity.There existed great industry heterogeneity in terms of the effects of the GVC participation degree and position on Chinese manufacturing carbon productivity.The GVC participation of high-tech manufacturing industry had a positive effect on manufacturing carbon productivity;while as for middle and lower-tech manufacturing industries,increasing the GVC participation degree had little impact on manufacturing carbon productivity;the GVC of low-tech manufacturing industries had a prominently negative impact,and middle and higher-tech manufacturing industry also had little impact.The research innovations are as follows:?1?The thesis theoretically analyses the impact mechanism of the GVC participation on China's carbon emissions and carbon productivity.The thesis analyzes the impact mechanism of GVC participation on China's carbon productivity from two aspects–direct effect and indirect effect?e.g.technology spillover effect,environmental regulation effect,low-locked effect?.Different from the research of Benarroch and Weder?2006?and Swart?2013?,this research,from the perspectives of the intermediate trade and two-stage production,adds the degree of low carbon technology blockade of the developed countries and absorptive capacity of China's low carbon technology.Moreover,this thesis,by constructing the theoretical model,systemically reveals the impact mechanism of the GVC participation on China's carbon emissions and carbon productivity,providing theoretical foundations for the empirical study in the last chapters.?2?The thesis investigates the impact of the GVC participation on China's carbon emissions from the perspectives of added value and embodied carbon.Different from the previous input-output model based on only single region and the bilateral trade model,the thesis measures the regions and industrial positions of the embodied carbon emissions in China's foreign trade based on the GMRIO model,so that the results proved more accurate and comprehensive,providing data support for China's participation in global carbon emissions reduction negotiation.In addition,different from the previous research only from one aspect of China's export embodied carbon or export domestic added value,the thesis measures the carbon emission costs of China's exports,based on the implicit carbon index for export of domestic value-added constructed under the framework of value added,and employs the structural decomposition method to explain in detail the factors influencing the embodied carbon emissions of China's overall and industry exports and finds out the important influencing factors that affected China's export embodied carbon emissions.?3?The thesis empirically investigates the impact of the GVC participation on China's carbon productivity from the perspectives of spatial econometrics and added value decomposition.The existing literature usually overlooked the possible spatial correlation of element flow between regions.Therefore,this thesis constructs static and dynamic four different spatial weight matrix,and investigate the spatial spillover effect of the GVC participation on China's carbon productivity from the perspective of spatial econometrics,which could avoid the specification bias of traditional econometric models,providing empirical basis for regional cooperation and emission reduction policy formulation in China.Moreover,the previous studies only used the vertical specialization index to measure the degree of the GVC participation.The thesis,under the framework of added value decomposition,tests the degree and position index of GVC participation,and from the perspectives of added value source and cross-border number,further explains the degree of the GVC participation,which overcomes the shortages,such as double-counting the added value by the traditional trade framework and the inability to distinguish between sources of added value and cross-border number,etc.,accurately measuring the impact of GVC participation on manufacturing's carbon productivity.