A Comparative Analysis On Export Trade Effect Of Environmental Regulation About Eastern Middle And Western Region In China

Over the last decade, the rapid expansion of China’s export trade has created huge trade surplus, however, that the caused large-scale economic growth from export will undoubtedly cause a greater negative impact on China’s natural environment. The pollution-intensive products with High pollution and high consumption still had a high proportion in the export commodity structure, which cause government began to implement a series of environmental regulatory policy to curb the externalities of export trade, to increase investment on controlling environmental pollution gradually, to improve pollution permits permit system, tradable permits, deposit refund policies, and gradually promote resources and environmental protection agreements, environmental certification and environmental taxes. Meanwhile, it’s imminent to make a positive and reasonable environmental regulation with the further economic development and per capita income rising, as well as residents increasingly strong preference for environmental protection. However, due to the unevenness of China’s regional economic development, there is a huge difference on the level of environmental regulation in different regions, which will cause regional differences of export trade effects from different levels of environment regulation. In view of this, it’s essential for us to carefully study the environmental regulation of the export trade effects about the eastern、middle and western areas of China for the promotion of sustainable development of foreign trade in different regions.Based on the reviewing of the relevant literature about trade effects of environmental regulation in domestic and foreign, and analyzing the status of environmental regulation and export trade of eastern、middle and western areas of China, this paper uses "environmental pollution control investment" to measure the levels of environmental regulation in different regions, and establishes a fixed effect variable coefficient panel empirical model for the cointegration analysis and also for the Granger causality test of environmental regulation and the export trade. The results shows that environmental regulation and the export trade are mutually reinforcing in the short and long term; the increasing of investment in wastewater treatment and waste gas treatment would help the vast majority of eastern middle and western provinces export trade development, the increasing of investment in solid waste may have a negative impact on exports in most provinces, but this impact is negligible.The empirical analysis results show that, our existing and relaxed environmental regulation could benefit China’s export trade at present, but it couldn’t conduct the sustainable development of export trade. Finally, the author recommends relevant advices and policies on how to achieve long-term, coordinated and sustainable development of environmental regulation and the export trade from the macro and the micro point of view, also considering the differences of regional economic development.