Study Of China’s Trade Structure Optimization By The Perspective Of Low Carbon

With the speedy development of global economy, the climate problems keeps deteriorating, which seriously affect the living standard of human. To counter back with such an unfavorable situation, and ensure the sustainability of development,<United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change> was published in July1992. The convention brought up guidelines for dealing with global climate changes as well as clarified the goal for controlling the release of greenhouse gases. Followed by agreements such as <Kyoto Protocol>,<Bali Roadmap>,<Copenhagen Pact> that came into existence successively, we witnessed the worldwide efforts persistently put in coping with climate issues. Low carbon economy and sustainable development have become the mainstream conceptions accepted by various nations. Also it’s the inevitable trend of economical development to transform towards low-carbon economics and to realize the harmonious relationship between human and the environment in the current world.China has been the fastest growing country which keeps the speed of25%-30%in foreign trade since21century. However, the structural discrepancy between Chinese import and export is huge, and China’s cost of environment is still low. So each department always ignores the negative effects of environment pollution when they trade. In the long run, this hinders China’s sustainable development. As the result, to develop low-carbon economy and to transform Chinese foreign trade structure with low carbon orientation is an important act to protect sustainable development of Chinese economy. Meanwhile, it’s an answer to the long-standing claim that is to change the increase mode of Chinese economy. This paper took a full investigation into Chinese trade structure aiming to analyze its high carbon release situation and the cause for it with the input-output method and time-varying parameter model, moreover, it tried to bring up detailed suggestions on policy to transform Chinese foreign trade structure.This paper is consisted of6chapters which are 1. IntroductionThis chapter gives particulars on the background and research meaning of the topic, research methods, arrangement of contents, and innovations.2. Literature ReviewThis chapter combines both foreign and domestic research works to peer review the related theories. The foreign parts include literature reviews on sustainable development of trade, ways of low carbonization in trade, concealed energy/carbon release, and carbon release in developing countries. While the development of low carbon economy, structure of foreign trade, environmental effects of trade and trade measures in view of low carbon consisted of the domestic literature review.3. Introduction to Chinese trade structure and carbon releaseFirstly, the concept of trade structure is clarified in this chapter. Secondly, the current situation of Chinese foreign trade situation is introduced in the structure of products, ways and nations in foreign trade three ways. Thirdly, from aspects like the total amount of carbon release, carbon release per capita and intensity of carbon release etc, the Chinese carbon release condition is analyzed.4. Analyze of "Carbon Structure" in Chinese import and export tradeBased on the input-output method, an input-output mould is created to estimate and illustrate the embodied carbon release, which is a concept defined at the beginning of this chapter. With statistics from<Chinese Input-Output Table> and <Chinese Sta. Almanac>, entire release coefficient in all professions, the amount of embodied carbon release and net carbon release in import and export trade are calculated, in order to analyze the "Carbon Structure" in Chinese import and export trade.5. Carbon effects of China’s trade pattern structureThis chapter analyzes the carbon effects of China’s general exportation and processing exportation using time-varying parameter model.6. Conclusions and policy suggestionsPolicy suggestions about optimizing the structure of our country’s trade products are offered in different aspects such as optimization of export products, optimization of structure of export pattern, and optimization of import structure.In the end, we give our withdraws. Conclusions that the paper arrived at mainly were:(1)China is a net export country of concealed carbon release in foreign trade and the huge trade surplus for china leads to large amount of concealed carbon release in net export. But it’s unfair to blame China for huge carbon release because a large part of China’s carbon dioxide release is undertaken for developed countries via export. Aiming at these questions, a sound inspect system should be established to make the share of responsibility clear from the point of final consumption. Developed countries which take carbon release as an excuse to charge additional customs duties towards Chinese export productions are obviously showing the trade protectionism, which is an injustice act. Thus, international community ought to consider the sacrifice made by China for the global development and see the Chinese carbon release problem with a global vision.(2)There are3points of reasons for carbon-intensive situations of China’s trade structure, such as the economic effects of energy, the environmental effects of energy and the imbalance of trade commodity structure. Different import and export sectors have different energy economic effects and environmental effects. There are significant differences in energy economic effects and environmental effects between different sectors due to their different production process and the input of technology. And there are a large number of low value-added high pollution industries. The three factors above constitute the high trade carbon emission.(3) China’s structure of exportation pattern has a positive effect on carbon emission in the long-term. However, China’s structure of importation pattern has a negative effect on carbon emission in the long-term. It shows that general and processing exportation have the significant long-term positive dynamic relationships with carbon dioxide emission. In contrast, general exportation is the most important factor which affects the emission, and processing exportation is thinner. What is more, the effects of general exportation have the increasing trend in the long-term, while the effects of progressing exportation have the opponent trend.