China's Foreign Trade And Energy Consumption

In recent years, China's foreign trade grew rapidly, and brought a lot of energy consumption, "high export, high-energy" has become an important feature of China's economic growth. China is mainly an export-oriented economy country, embodied energy in import and export trade accounts for a large proportion of the energy consumption, we urgently need to understand the embodied energy in import and export trade in order that we can offer the reference and basis on the policy decision of the adjustment of product structure in foreign trade in future.First of all, this paper uses input-output method to calculate the embodied energy of China's import and export in 2002 and 2007, and analyzes the relationship between the export-oriented economy and the energy consumption in China. The results show that China's embodied energy in import and export trade are both increasing, and in addition China changes from a net importer in 2002 to a net exporter in 2007 of embodied energy, which reflects China's foreign trade export structure tended to the products of high energy consumption, the quality of foreign trade has fallen.Then, using the LMDI method, the paper divided the influence factors of the embodied energy's changes into three aspects:scale effect, technical effect and structural effect. The results show that the expansion of the import and export scale can cause the increase of the embodied energy primarily; the technical effect is a key factor in reducing embodied energy, and the structural effect haves both positive effects and negative impacts on the changes of the embodied energy.Finally, based on the above research, the article proposes the relevant policy recommendations. By the methods of controlling the rate of economic growth, promoting the adjustment of the industrial structure in foreign trade, improving energy efficiency and so on, China can reduce the energy consumption and realize sustainable economic development.