Embodied Carbon In BRICS International Trade And Policy Implications For China

Global climate change has been attracted much political and academic attentions all over the world recently.Many instruments have been implemented to control the worldwide temperature raise.As the important part of the world economy,the BRICS(Brazil,Russia,India,China and South Africa)economy has provided enormous goods and services to satisfy demands from developed economies via international trade and business.With the BRICS countries especially China being the global critical growth pole,the carbon emission as well as the embodied carbon emissions in international trade released from the production side to meet their domestic demand and other economies has been attracted lots of attentions.This research firstly applies the improved Input-output model to a newly compiled world input-output table to measure the embodied carbon emissions in BRICS countries.The results show that China,as the top carbon emitter worldwide as well as in BRICS economy system,is the top one economy who has produced and transmitted the largest carbon emissions for her other trades partners.By considering the unbalanced development of different regions in China,this research secondly compiles a new world input-output table including Chinese 30 provinces or cities and develops a multi-country and multi-regional input-output model to assess the embodied carbon emission and carbon linkages in China's native trade among provincial economics and those in their international trade with other BRICS countris respectively.Policy implications on curbing the carbon emissions in the BRICS economy and China are discussed finally.The main innovative works done in this paper are as follows.(1)This study uses the bibliometric analysis to study the literature of the embodied carbon emissions in international trade,the empirical model design and applied studies are furtherly studied at the same time.The results show that the multi-regional input and output model has been the main and popular tool to measure the embodied carbon in international trade with more and more input output data and energy use data are available.Based on the existed literature,this research shall analyze the embodied carbon in BRICS by improving the environmental input-output model and compling relative new global input-output database.(2)This study analyzes the developments of economy and international trade for every BRICS countries based on the manual combined statisticas of BRICS.The national carbon emission as well as the embodied carbon emission in BRICS' international trade are discussed based on the database of OECD on global carbon emissions.The results show that firstly the GDP of BRICS increased from 2000 to 2015.China was with high growth speeds and economic quantities.Secondly,international goods and services trades were down in 2009 impacted by the American subprime mortgae crisis,and rebound since 2010.Thirdly,the carbon emissions from BRICS increased during 1995-2011,and the embodied carbon in trade from China significantly raised with high growth rate followed by India,South Africa and Russia.The carbon emission in Brazil fluctuated with low amounts.(3)This study complies a new world Input-output table including all the BRICS countries,and develops an improved environmental global multi-regional Input-output model.This model considers the embodied carbon respectively in the intermediate goods and services trade as well as those in finial demand.Comparing with the traditional multi-regional input-output model,this model could analyze the embodied carbon in the triangle trade relationships.The results show that China and Russia,as the largest economies globally in the BRICS economy,are the two biggest carbon emission producing and transmitting countries.China as the biggest emitter has absorbed and transmitted large amounts of carbon emissions from other BRICS countries and her other primary trading partners.(4)This study compiles a new worldwide input-output table including Chinese 30 provincial input-output data,and develops an extended environmental multi-country and multi-regional input-output model.The detailed method is slicing one of the largest economies globally and then inserting them into a global input-output model as a replace.The China's regional level carbon emissions embodied in trade with other BRICS countries are studied.Results show that most of the provinces located in central and east of China are the net carbon emitter in international trade as well as for theirs native regional level trade within China.The different characteristics of China's east,central and west regions in economic structure and trade structure are significant.Besides,in BRICS economy,the trade relationships between China-Russia and China-India significantly show theirs regional and sectoral characteristics.(5)This study merges the improved hypothetical extracted method to the multi-country and multi-region input-output model based on the databased built in last chapter to analyze the linkage degree among the sectors of Chinese 30 regions with other BRICS countries.The results show that the provinces with most powerful inner carbon linkages could be listed as Neimenggu,Hebei,Guangdong,Shandong,Jiangsu,Shanxi provinces and so on.In BRICS,China has relatively stronger backward linkage in trade with Russia and forward linkage in trade with India.The carbon linkage analysis of trade relationships between China-India,China-Brazil,China-South Africa show that Guangdong,Shandong,and Jiangsu province have both of the backward and forward sectoral carbon linkages among the three trade relationships mentioned above.The sectoral level results show that most of the provinces from China are net forward linkage province in their separate international trade.