The Positive Studies On Environmental Impact Of Foreign Trade In China

International trade has been influencing more or less the ecological environment from the very beginning. For a long time, the relationship between international trade and environment was always out of direct concern in the academia due to environmental externality, limitation on the policy of trade and environment, preferences of human behaviors, the lag of environmental consciousness etc. As the development of economic globalization and trade liberalization, the international division of labor that bases on production gradually turns into that bases on production factors. Hence, the exploration to environment effects increasingly becomes the cutting-edge problem of international trade theory and policy. To a specific country or area, how to achieve the sustainable development under the restriction of environmental capacity is a problem widely regarded by experts and academicians. It is also a dilemma faced by many developing countries.Since China's reform and opening up to the outside, foreign trade has been growingly developed in depth and breadth. When enjoying the fruits of trade liberalization, China is also under pressure from deteriorating consequences of the ecological environment. Thus, how much of its correlation is between trade liberalization and the environment? And how many positive and negative effects were respectively caused by China's foreign trade? This article attempts to answer the above problems from the quantitative angle, and to explore whether there is a short-sighted overdraft of comparative advantage, based on which we make relevant policy recommendations.This article brings environment factor into the traditional international trade theory. We consider China's 14 industrial sector as our objects of study, and use the econometric tool to analyze overall environmental effects by foreign trade from macro level and to measure impacts of import and export trade on polluting strength in every sector from micro level. The environment effect could consist of three parts as follows: structure effects, technique effects, and scale effects. The result indicates that the structure effects and technique effects are positive, which are not far arrived at the negative scale effects, above of which make the overall environment effect negative. Namely, since 1990s, the export trade has brought seriously bad impacts on environment. Firms obtain comparative advantage by cheap resources and environment factors because of external environment costs, as a result of which left a heavy burden on ecological environment. Meanwhile, the conclusion also shows that export can reduce the polluting strength when a few sectors adopt clean production methods. Only when the environment costs embodied in firms, clean techniques imported and assimilated, the utilization ratio of resources enhanced, and environmental protection developed in scale, enterprises will gain green comparative advantage in the long run. When analyzing the environment effects of import, we have brought in an EET specification, which tells that China imports most of energy-intensive goods and pollution- intensive goods. The weighted polluting density of import is far higher than that of export. Therefore, the environment effects of import are positive. Based on these conclusions, this article brings forward some recommendations on how to achieve the internalization of environment costs, optimize foreign trade structure, and implement environment-friendly foreign trade policies.