The Comparisons Between Trade Benefits And Environment Costs Of China And America's Exports In Global Value Chains

This paper constructs Multi-Region Input-Output model among 41 economies in 35 sectors from 1995 to 2009 based on World Input-Output Database and makes a thorough comparison between both China and the US's value-added and carbon emissions by applying the forward and backward industry-linkage-based decomposition method as well as the structure path analysis method(MRIO-SPA),so as to address that:whether these two countries' trade benefits and environmental costs are equivalent?If not,which sectors and paths exist obvious difference in terms of the amount of value-added and carbon emissions.According to the empirical results,we can draw the following conclusions:Firstly,China benefits mainly from the final product exports and it has environmental costs comparative advantage compared with intermediate trade flows,while the US shows the opposite results,positioned in the middle and upper reaches of the GVC;Secondly,from the aggregate level,the value added and its corresponding carbon emissions of China's exports are not equivalent,which results in a lower energy efficiency compared with that of the US.But from the sectoral level,some production layers,routes and industries have relatively comparative environmental advantages:For production layer,the closer to the final demands,the more profits China gets,and the share of value-added is lower than that of the corresponding carbon emissions.Especially the zeroth layer,there is a increasing trend of value-added share and a decreasing trend of carbon emissions share over the research period;For sectors,the carbon emission intensity of "Electrical and Optical Equipment" is lower than the average level of the gross exports,and "Inland Transport" produces a large amount of emissions,while creates the equivalent value added,hence achieving a relatively lower carbon intensity;For paths,there are 13 paths for carbon emissions ended with"Electricity,Gas and Water Supply",while there no path appears in the top 25-ranking for value-added,indicating this sector bears heavy carbon emission costs and not making equivalent trade profits."Electrical and Optical Equipment" contributes a relative higher proportion for both value-added and carbon emissions,meanwhile,this sector creates most value-added by exporting final products,hence,the carbon density is relatively lower.Based on the empirical results,the policy advice in this paper mainly focus on the following three aspects:For the paths and sectors with high-carbon-intensity through the forward industry-linkage-based decomposition,China should work hard on adjusting the existed energy source structure and improving energy efficiency;From the backward perspective,China should change the current structure of intermediate inputs towards a lower-carbon-intensity structure;After recognizing paths and sectors with comparative advantages in environmental costs,it's important to aware that increasing the ability to create value-added is the essential way to promote industrial upgrading as well as to improve the inequivalence between export benefits and carbon emissions.