Research On The Effects Of Trade Liberalization Of China's Carbon Emissions

Since the reform and opening up in1978, China’s economy has grown rapidly, and China’s import and export trade have experienced a sustained and rapid growth. China’s has gradually been depended on foreign trade to develop its economy, and its dependence on foreign trade reached50%in2010. At the same time, China’s greenhouse gas emissions are increasing year by year. According to the U.S. Bureau of Energy statistics, in2010, China has become the world’s largest country of carbon dioxide emissions. With the increasingly serious problem of global climate change, China is facing tremendous pressure at home and abroad in reducing emissions of greenhouse gas. In recent years, China’s economic development model at the price of large resources consumption has resulted in a huge amount of carbon dioxide emissions. In the international conferences, China has faced great pressure to reduce emissions. And we usually use per capita carbon emissions as the basis for defense. However, other developed countries criticize that China should bear the primary responsibility for global climate change because of the great amount of total emissions. Therefore, we should find other arguments to fight for the initiative rights, and it is particularly important for china in the international emission reduction negotiations.In fact, China is already the factory of the world, and a lot of primary products are manufactured in China, which consume a lot of resources of China, and produce emissions of carbon dioxide in China. However, these products are consumed by developed countries, which increase China’s carbon emissions, and reduce carbon emissions of developed countries. Scholars at home and abroad have stressed that it is more fair and reasonable to calculate the responsibility for reduction from the view of consumers. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to inspect whether foreign trade has affected China’s carbon emissions and how much of the influence. And we look for evidences for China to alleviate the pressure of emission reduction in the international conferences on the basis of foreign trade.Firstly, it analyzes the mechanism of the impact of trade liberalization on carbon emissions on theory. Secondly, it uses theoretical model of foreign trade and the environmental impact of Antweiler et al. and gets three effects that foreign trade affects carbon emission. Thirdly, it try to find out the preliminary relationship between foreign trade and carbon emissions in China, and the analysis is based on data from1978to2009. It shows that China’s gross domestic product, foreign trade and carbon emissions have a common upward trend.Then, it is the empirical analysis of the influence of foreign trade to China’s carbon emissions, which consists of two parts:overall analysis of foreign trade’s influence to China’s carbon emissions, and industry analysis of foreign trade’s influence on China’s carbon emissions. In the overall analysis, it verifies that the foreign trade has a significant impact on carbon emissions in China based on time series analysis. There is a positive correlation relationship between the volume of foreign trade and the Chinese carbon emissions in long-run, and foreign trade is indeed an important factor affecting China’s carbon emissions.In the Part of industry analysis, it uses input-output to estimate how much of China’s carbon emissions caused by net exports. And we get the result that imports and exports of various industries affect China’s carbon emissions. It shows that China is a net exporter of carbon emissions from the total point of view, and the increase of carbon emissions because of trade in China accounts for the total carbon emissions by24.4%. From the industry point of view, the net exports industry of China’s carbon emissions are concentrated in China’s traditional advantage industry labor-intensive industries and resource-intensive industries, such as textile and manufacturing industries.Finally, according to the empirical analysis, we draw out some suggestions:China should fight for the initiative rights in the negotiations from the perspective of consumers in the international emission reduction conference; China should deny and refute the grounds of new trade protectionism of carbon tariffs from the consumer point of view; China should introduce new technologies to reduce the carbon emissions intensity of the various sectors; China needs to adjust industrial structure of the import and export in order to reduce exports of industrial products whose carbon intensity resources consumption are too large.