China’s Interprovincial Trade Implied Carbon Accounting And Its Influencing Factors Exploration

In recent years,the continuous growth of global carbon dioxide emissions has led to the melting of glaciers,the rise of sea level and other environmental phenomena that endanger the survival of global organisms.In order to control carbon emissions and slow down global warming,China needs coordination among provinces to explore a sustainable development path that addresses climate change and advances economic stability.However,inter-provincial trans-regional trade separates production-related carbon emissions from actual consumption,leading to excessive carbon emission pollution in commodity production for consumption,resulting in carbon transfer problems implicit in commodities caused by trade flows.The carbon transfer implied by inter-provincial trade not only increases the environmental burden of commodity production,but also increases the obstacle for clarifying the responsibility of regional emission reduction and improving the efficiency of regional coordinated emission reduction.Based on the above background,this dissertation calculated the amount of China’s inter-provincial trade embodied carbon transfer in 2012,2015 and 2017,verified the pollution paradise hypothesis of China’s inter-provincial trade embodied carbon transfer,and analyzed the influencing factors of China’s inter-provincial trade embodied carbon transfer.First of all,this dissertation calculates and makes descriptive statistics the amount of carbon embodied in trade between 31 provinces of China in 2012,2015 and 2017 by using multi-regional input-output model.The results show that :(1)Commodity processing is the main factor leading to carbon embodied in trade between 31 provinces of China;(2)The net transfer of carbon implied by trade between regions has aggregation effect.East and South China are the agglomeration areas of carbon implied by trade,north China is the agglomeration area of carbon implied by trade,and northwest,southwest,central and northeast China are relatively balanced.The net transfer amount of carbon embodied in trade in Guangdong province,Zhejiang Province and Jiangsu Province is relatively high,while that in Shandong Province,Shanxi Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is relatively high.Since The establishment of Xiongan New Area in Hebei province in 2017,Hebei province became the province with the highest net transfer amount of carbon embodied in trade in 2017,and transferred a large amount of carbon embodied in trade to Shanxi Province.(3)In most provinces,the implied carbon consumption and production increased firstly and then decreased over time.2015 was the peak year of implied carbon consumption and production,and 2017 was the lowest in three years,indicating that the consumption and production patterns of provinces in 2017 had begun to shift to low carbon.In addition,compared with the implied carbon consumption,the implied carbon production decreased more in 2017,indicating that the effect of low-carbon production is more obvious.Secondly,the dissertation builds a complex network model based on the data of carbon transfer embodied in inter-provincial trade,and analyzes the key nodes in China’s inter-provincial trade embodied carbon transfer network from the perspective of node centrality of the complex network.The results show that :(1)Qinghai province and Tibet autonomous region have little influence on the inter-provincial trade implicit carbon transfer network;(2)Jiangsu province,Zhejiang province,Henan province,Hebei province and Shandong province are the key nodes in the inter-provincial trade embodied carbon transfer network.When the supply and demand of carbon commodities in these regions change,the trade embodied carbon transfer amount of more provinces will change.Finally,this dissertation uses the trade implied carbon transfer between the two provinces as the explained variable to construct an extended trade gravity model,and verifies the paradise hypothesis of China’s inter-provincial trade implied carbon pollution,and studies the factors influencing the carbon implied transfer.On this basis,regional heterogeneity analysis is conducted.The results show that :(1)There is a pollution paradise effect in China’s inter-provincial trade,that is,the greater the economic development gap between the two regions,the higher the carbon implicit transfer;(2)The economic development level of the two provinces has a positive influence on the implicit carbon transfer between the two provinces;The degree of dependence on foreign trade,technological level,government investment in environmental protection,and population circulation capacity of the provinces have a positive impact on the transfer of embodied carbon between the two provinces.The distance between the two provinces and the public’s environmental concern of the provinces have a negative impact on the transfer of the embodied carbon between the two provinces.(3)There are regional differences in the effects of pollution paradise effect and influencing factors.The pollution paradise effect is obvious between central and eastern provinces and between central and western provinces in China,and no obvious evidence is found to prove the existence of pollution paradise effect between eastern and western provinces.The research results of this dissertation are helpful to clarify the carbon emission reduction targets of different provinces from a fairer perspective and rationally divide the carbon emission quotas of different provinces.Under the "dual carbon" target,it is of certain significance to steadily promote the construction of China’s carbon trading market,strengthen regional coordinated emission reduction,and force the net transfer of carbon hidden out of the green development of provinces.