ZHANG Yun, TANG Haiyan：Trade Liberalization Policies of Carbon Emissions Peak Commitment in China's “New Normal”——An Empirical Test on Environmental Effect of Trade Openness and Carbon Leakage Existence

Abstract：China promises that carbon dioxide emissions will peak in 2030, so carbon emissions growth “ceiling” and inevitable industrial restructuring reinforce the importance of trade emissions effect and carbon leakage for China. This paper derives SRIO model and calculates the emission coefficients of energy and Chinese industrial net carbon emissions embodied in exports in high-carbon and low-carbon industries. Then this paper builds panel data model based on 20 industries from 2000 to 2011, to analyze carbon emissions effect of trade openness and carbon leakage, as well as verify the reliability of conclusions by adding control variables such as employees, R&D intensity and economic activities. The results show that there is a EKC in China's industrial sector as a whole and low-carbon industry but there is not inverted “U”-shaped EKC in high-carbon industry, and trade openness of low-carbon industry helps to improve environment, but high-carbon industry's trade openness exacerbates pollution and for the industrial sector as a whole, trade openness helps to improve the environment too. And the elastic value explains that the negative effect of high-carbon industry restricts environmental pollution to be improved in overall industrial sectors. This paper analyzes carbon leakage with cross-term of trade openness and industrial added value, which shows that there is not carbon leakage phenomenon for low-carbon industry and industrial sector as a whole, but the carbon leakage problem cannot be confirmed for high-carbon industry. And the test result shows that, by building a dummy variable, there may be “pollution haven” effect of China's industries. Policy recommendations are mainly to exert positive interaction between trade openness and environmental effects and pay attention to structural adjustment, to improve human capital ratio structure and achieve reduction path extended from industrial structure optimization to technology innovation, and to reduce industrial carbon emissions intensity to get a greater carbon emissions space under Chinas new normal of economy.

Key words： Carbon Emissions Embodied in Trade    Trade Openness    Carbon Leakage

source:Finance & Trade Economics ,No.7,2015