The Impact Of Environmental Regulations On The Quality Of China's Imported Intermediate Products

In the process of continuously advancing industrialization,China has achieved rapid economic growth,but it has long overlooked the deteriorating ecological environment brought about by it.In recent years,the government's efforts on environmental regulations have gradually increased,and the public's awareness of environmental protection has gradually increased.The “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for Ecological Environmental Protection” clearly states that the overall environmental quality will be improved by strengthening the implementation of the strict environmental protection system.At the specific implementation level,the government has not only issued several relevant policies and regulations to reduce environmental pollution and promote the green transformation of enterprises.China is also the world's largest developing country and the second-largest importer.In recent years,to accelerate the transformation of the foreign trade model,the country has begun to actively expand its imports.The report of the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized the importance of insisting on equal emphasis on imports and exports.Since 2014,the focus of the expansion of import policies has gradually changed.Initially,the country aimed to balance trade,emphasizing that import and export development should go hand in hand,and then due to the impact of the limited domestic resources,to alleviate the internal scarcity of resources and environmental crisis,expand The necessity of imports has been reflected.In this context,for a special economy like China,it is necessary to understand the relationship between environmental regulation and import trade.To study China's import trade,we must consider both intermediate goods and capital goods,but the proportion of intermediate goods trade in imports has increased rapidly in recent years,and the quality of imported intermediate goods directly affects the quality of final products,which will have an important impact on economic growth.Intermediate product trade is a new perspective that has emerged in international trade theory and empirical research in recent years.As the micro-subject of production and trading activities,enterprises have the initiative to choose the quality of intermediate products under the pressure of environmental regulations.Under different environmental regulatory intensities,companies will choose intermediate products of a different quality than imported ones to match production,to improve the quality of the final product and thereby benefit.This article will discuss the impact of environmental regulations on the quality of imported intermediate products.We need to solve two types of problems: First,how to reasonably measure the quality level of imported intermediate products considering the realistic condition of China and analyze the results;Second,in the face of rising costs brought by environmental regulations and other constraints on enterprises,what impact does it have on imported high-quality intermediates.This article researches these two types of problems.To solve the first problem,it is necessary to find a suitable method for measuring the intermediate quality of Chinese imports and analyze the results from the perspective of method and data constraints.To solve the second problem,we must refer to previous empirical research.Select appropriate variables for empirical research.Specifically,this paper uses Khandewal(2010)demand information regression inference method to measure the quality of China's imported intermediate products from 2008 to 2016 from the product level of HS6 digits,and aggregate and analyze them according to the year.Then,based on the theory of "pollution refuge" and "Porter hypothesis",according to the direct effects,squeeze-out effects,and innovation compensation effects of the implementation of environmental regulatory policies on the quality of imported intermediate products,the mechanism was analyzed.Taking China's 27 manufacturing industries as the research object,the econometric model is constructed.First of all,it analyzes the impact of environmental regulations on the quality of imported intermediate products at a general level and then starts from the perspective of differences in the degree of pollution in the industry.The impact of environmental regulations on polluting industries and pollution-intensive industries on imported intermediates and the results are tested for robustness from the perspective of country type and industry quality level.In conclusions:(1)in terms of overall scope,the impact of environmental regulations on the quality of imported intermediate products is positive;(2)the wage level of China's manufacturing industries,the degree of trade openness of importing countries,and the level of economic liberalization Both suppress the quality upgrade of imported intermediate products,and the per capita GDP of the importing source country effectively promote the quality improvement of imported intermediate products;(3)The impact of environmental regulations on the quality of imported intermediate products has certain industry heterogeneity;(4)lower-level industrial environmental regulations on mid-range products have improved the quality of their imported products The effect is the strongest,followed by the low-end products,and the mid-range products that have higher levels of intermediate products have the weakest quality improvement effects.Based on the above analysis results,this article puts forward corresponding policy recommendations,such as formulating appropriate environmental regulatory policies,strengthening supervision,advocating cleaner production,energy conservation and emission reduction of enterprises;relaxing restrictions on the number of imports,formulating tariff rates according to different classification standards,and providing high-quality intermediate products.Import and create a favorable environment;make overall plans for strategies to improve the quality of workers;increase market-oriented reform processes,and improve supporting policies for systems and mechanisms.