Study Of The Ecological Footprint Of The Major Countries Of China And Asean Trade

Ecological assessment of sustainable development is one of the leading fields of international ecological economics and of research on sustainable development. Ecological footprint, which is a new biophysical method of ecological assessment, is developing rapidly. It quantifies the ecological sustainability of the development of a nation or an area from the standpoint of biological production. It estimates the level of natural resources utilization and the ecological carrying capacity of nature. With the rapid development of international trade, more and more people pay attention to the ecological footprint which is generated and transferred by trade. Presently, many scholars have separated the trade account from the overall ecological footprint, and classified the trade productions to calculate their trade footprint.In November 2002, the China - ASEAN Free Trade Area advancement started officially, Chinese and Association of Southeast Asian Nations' trade operations has rapidly increased. This paper introduces the improved model of ecological footprint to calculate the trade footprint between China and five nations of ASEAN from 2002 to 2006. Compared with all the data, China separately has her deficit with Philippines in these five years. But China has her trade ecological surplus with Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, and the surplus increases year by year. From 1993, China has maintained a trade deficit to the ASEAN, which increases with time. By studying the trade data from the year of 2002 to 2006 between China and ASEAN, a conclusion can be drawn that the trade between China and ASEAN is mainly complementary in the respect of ecological productive areas. Based on the rapid development of the whole world, we should reduce the threat to the environment by optimizing the structure of trade. We should not only expand the quantity of trade, but also improve the quality of trade.