Research On Energy Intensity Change In The Industrialization Of China

China has experienced three industrialization stages since 1949,that is,the first stage of priority development of heavy industry before 1978,the second stage of balanced development of heavy industry and light industry between 1979-1997,and the third stage of restarting of heavy and chemical industry after 1998.Corresponding to the different stages of industrialization,energy intensity shows different trends and characteristics.For example,the trend of energy intensity is highly consistent with the change of heavy industry rate in the era of planned economy.However,it becomes inconsistent in the phase of balanced development,and extremely inconsistent in the third stage of Chinese industrialization,a short period(2002-2004)of which rebecomes consistent.Then,what is the relationship between China's industrialization development and the change of energy intensity? Why is there such a difference in performance at different stages? What is the mechanism of industrialization's impact on energy intensity change? To clarify these questions can not only deepen the understanding the industrialization and energy intensity change in theory,but also has certain enlightenment significance for the current and future energy policies.It especially has more practical significance when considering the extremely unbalanced development in China.In the research field of energy intensity change,many fruitful studies have been provided,however,few of them take the industrial perspective,and very few studies focus on the relationship of industrialization and energy intensity change using theoretic models.In view of the limitations in the existing literature,this paper constructs an analysis framework of industrialization to describe the change of energy intensity.On the one hand,the contribution of industrialization,represented by industrial structure,to energy intensity change is discussed;on the other hand,the mechanism of industrialization on energy intensity change,especially on the long-term change of energy intensity,is explored through integrating growth theory and structural change theory.Based on these two main lines,a series of studies are carried out in this paper:In order to highlight the influence of industrial structure on energy intensity change,this paper integrates the achievements of recent development under the mainstream framework of factor decomposition approach to build a new comprehensive decomposition framework(CDF)that is based on multi-level IDA and stochastic metafrontier model.The new framework also incorporates PDA and utilizes the Shepard energy distance function that represents the maximum energy conversation potential.According to the data structure of China's industry statistics,a four-level CDF is proposed.In the calculations,a newly developed two-step stochastic metafrontier approach(TSSMFA)is applied instead of the traditional non-parametric DEA.TSSMFA is more excellent to a certain extent since it can ensure the consistency in both steps when calculating energy efficiency scores.Most of the traditional decomposition models are based on the constant-price industrial structure,however,they are vulnerable to obtain conflicting results to the real economy.This is because the industrial structure measured at constant price is different from the reality measured at current price except the base year;more seriously,the industrial structures measured at different constant price are likely to be different.In order to solve this problem and remain the comparability in time series,a decomposition of current-price industrial structure is constructed.For the influence mechanism of industrialization change on energy intensity,this paper builds a two-sector model of structural change and energy intensity change following the route of technical differences from production-side perspective.That is,sectoral energy intensity change is determined by the difference of sectoral energy consumption technology and energy production technology;structure change is determined by sectoral technical difference and substitution of sectoral goods;the overall energy intensity change is shaped by both of them.The above mechanism affords a theoretical basis for the factor decomposition approach.Further,the two-sector model is extended to three-sector model to explain Kuznets facts and the inverted-U trend of energy intensity appearing in the process of industrialization in developed countries as well as China.This paper also constructs another model of structural change and energy intensity change from both production and demand sides.The model investigates the influence mechanism of the catching up strategy,labelled by energy price distortion between heavy and light industries,on the inverted-U change of industrial energy intensity before and after the reform and opening-up.Theoretical findings are that the catch-up strategy has promoted the growth of energy intensity in heavy industry,while restrained the growth of energy intensity in light industry but promoted the growth of industrial energy intensity as a whole.Finally,according to the proposed CDF of current-price industrial structure,the driving forces of Chinese energy intensity change in 1973-2015 and 2001-2015 are explored respectively.On the other hand,based on the two models of structural change and energy intensity change,the inverted-U energy intensity changes of Chinese economy-wide and industrial economies are calibrated and simulated corresponding to 1953-2015 and 1973-1990 respectively,verifying that the models are appropriate and of explanation power.