Environmental Impact Of China’s Exports In The Context Of The "belt And Road"

Since the launch of the “Belt and Road” initiative(BRI),more than 130 countries and 30 international organizations have signed cooperation documents with China to build the BRI.China and the countries along the “Belt and Road”(B&R)have focused on connectivity and deepened pragmatic cooperation.The interconnection and interoperability architecture and cooperation projects represented by “Six Corridors,Six Roads,Multi-Country,Multi-Port” have been implemented,so China can establish a broad platform for further multi-level opening up and promoting international trade.This formed a good situation of mutual benefit,win-win and common development.At the same time,in the "post-Kyoto Protocol" era,the Paris Agreement,as the legal text of the international community’s response to climate change at this stage,places greater emphasis on the nationally determined contributions.The emerging economies are more deeply involved in global emissions reduction processes than ever before.Against this background,China issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Construction of the Green B&R,comprehensively promoted the B&R greening process,which means China will actively participate in global environmental governance,and build a community of benefits,responsibilities and fate.Based on that,this thesis analyzes and studies the export environmental performance of China ’s provincial administrative regions participating in the “Belt and Road”,and explore the Green B&R measures,the driving factors and mechanisms,based on the perspective of input-output analysis(IOA),combined with spatial econometric regression,and structural decomposition analysis(SDA).In the normative research,this thesis discusses the cost of carbon emissions in international trade from dimensions of foreign trade of China & BRI countries and carbon dioxide emissions footprints,combining methods of multi-regional input-output(MRIO),spatial econometrics,and SDA.Specifically,this thesis discusses the existing input-output table compilation methods are studied from the perspective of theoretical development and practical application;studies the economic and trade relations between China and the “Belt and Road” countries from the perspective of traditional trade and value-added trade;discuss the cost of carbon emissions in international trade from the production side and consumption;and discuss the influencing factors of carbon emissions from the perspective of spatial econometrics and SDA.At the same time,this thesis conducts a multi-angledinvestigation and analysis of the current economic development and carbon emissions of China and the countries along B&R and analyzes the MRIO tables in the GTAP database.This thesis also accounts consumption-based carbon emissions and production-based carbon intensity of various industries,which can be served as the basis for empirical research.In the empirical research,this thesis first examines the performance of the export environment of China’s provincial-level administrative regions participating in the GVC in the context of the B&R.Based on the GTAP v10 database,this thesis uses the official statistical data combined with the maximum entropy and cross-entropy models to estimate the trade flows and intra-regional technology matrices among the31 provincial administrative regions in China.The MRIO table of China’s provincial administrative regions is nested in the GTAP MRIO table to form the China-GTAP regional nested model.Based on this nested model,this thesis chooses the carbon emission intensity of value-added exports(CEIVE)as a measure of the green “belt and road”,so it is possible to uses environmentally extended IOA method to analyze CEIVE of the China’s provinces and B&R countries.The results show that China’s provinces have different development stages and different industrial structures.While the export environment performance has continued to improve,and regional differences are significant.At the same time,when facing different trading partners along the B&R,CEIVE of the two sides are also different.The eastern region ’s overall CEIVE is low,while the central and western regions have a gradient distribution in it,with large internal differences.Based on that,this thesis further examines how the energy intensity affects CEIVE in the context of the B&R from the perspective of spatial econometrics.The Moran’s I was used to test the spatial heterogeneity and spatial autocorrelation of provincial CEIVE.After conforming the spatial agglomeration,this thesis conducted a rigorous model identification and established a spatial Durbin model with two-way fixed effects.And through the robust analysis of different spatial weight matrices,it is obtained that the improvement of local energy efficiency will significantly improve the export environment performance of surrounding areas,and participation in the B&R will have a significant direct effect on reducing its own CEIVE.At the same time,this thesis also conducted a sub-regional study and found that for different regions at different stages of development,the impact mechanism of energy intensity on CEIVE is different,and the key control variables play different roles too.At the industry level,this thesis analyzes the CEIVE from the agricultural sector,energy sector,light industry sector,heavy industry and construction sector,and service sector in China.The comparative analysis is also carried out among the major trading partners of B&R and non-B&R.The ranking export environmental efficiency of China’s various sectors from high to low is in light industry sector,service sector,agriculture and energy sector,heavy industry and construction sector.Among them,the heavy industry sector is a key area in the construction of the Green B&R that requires major breakthroughs.In the world,many B&R countries that have cooperated closely with China have achieved green and sustainable development in their unique export industries.Their export environment performance is better than the United States and other countries which are not B&R countries.In order to further explore the driving factors of CEIVE at the industry level,this thesis conducts SDA to decomposes changes in CEIVE between 2011 and 2014 into direct carbon emission intensity,value-added rate,production structure and trade structure.The results indicate that in the agricultural sector,direct carbon emissions intensity and trade structure are the main driving factors;for changes in the energy sector,China mainly depends on changes in the value added rate,while other countries depends more on changes in the production structure;the light industry sector depends on changes in the trade structure;for the changes in different industries within the heavy industry and construction sector,direct carbon emissions intensity and value-added rate are still important;the service industry is relatively clean,except for the transportation industry,which determined by direct carbon emissions intensity,other industries are driven by the value-added rate.Based on the above analysis conclusions,this thesis gives the following policy recommendations: in the short term,different regions should use its own export industry advantages,complementing the advantages of the “Belt and Road” trading partners,and increase economic and trade exchanges in industries with high export environmental efficiency;Then China should continue to promote the technological upgrading of the entire industry chain and fundamentally improve China’s export environment performance;in the long run,international cooperation should be strengthened to jointly build a community of shared future for mankind.