The Impact Of International Trade On The Environment ——From The Perspective Of Production Consumption

The impact of international trade on the environment has become a hot issue concerned by all countries and even the world.The environmental problems caused by the participation of many countries,especially developing countries,in international trade are more serious.With the miracle of economic growth since the reform and opening up,especially after China's entry into WTO,China's import and export trade presents a blowout development trend.In 2013,China has surpassed the United States to become the world's largest trading country.Facing the instability and uncertainty of the current world trade pattern,China should still unswervingly expand its high-level opening to the outside world.At the same time,the people put forward higher requirements for environmental quality,which is increasingly prominent in the contradiction with the problem of environmental pollution in the process of high-level opening to the outside world.Therefore,in order to meet the people's growing needs for a better life,the report of the 19th national congress regards promoting the construction of a powerful trade country as an important part of building a modern economic system,and lists pollution prevention and control as one of the three key battles to win the decisive victory in building a well-off society in an all-round way.It can be seen that the party and government have taken promoting the construction of a trade power and preventing and controlling environmental pollution as important measures to promote China's high-quality development in the new era.However,there are great disputes in the existing literature on the relationship between China's participation in international trade and environmental pollution.In participating in trade,China's manufacturing enterprises have made great contributions.Enterprises are not only the main body of participating in trade,but also the pollution generated and discharged by enterprises in the process of production and operation constitutes the main body of environmental pollution.However,the discussion on the relationship between trade and environment from the micro perspective of enterprises is very scarce.Based on the above research background,this paper mainly studies the impact of international trade on the environment from the micro perspective of enterprise production and consumption.At present,China is the country with the largest emission of sulfur dioxide(SO₂)in the world,and the production and consumption activities of industrial enterprises are the main source of SO₂ pollution gas.Exceeding the standard of SO₂ emission will not only affect air quality and cause serious pollution,but also seriously threaten human life and health.Therefore,this paper selects SO₂ pollution gas as the object to measure environmental pollution.Firstly,this paper constructs the theoretical model of international trade on environmental pollution,decomposes the action mechanism affecting SO₂ emission from the enterprise level,and comes to the conclusion that the impact of international trade on SO₂ emission mainly works through technical effect.The technical effect brought by international trade is negative,and its absolute value is greater than that of other mechanism effects.The theoretical analysis part finally comes to the conclusion that international trade will reduce the total amount of SO₂ emission,and its main mechanism is realized by reducing the intensity of SO₂emission.The theoretical analysis part helps to clarify the various action mechanisms of international trade on total pollution emissions,and analyze the size and symbols of the effects of each mechanism,so as to obtain the relationship between international trade and environment.This part lays a theoretical foundation for the next analysis of the impact of enterprises'participation in international trade on SO₂ emission intensity.In the first part of the empirical study,this paper examines the impact of export on the environment,specifically,studies the impact of enterprise export status or export intensity on sulfur dioxide emission intensity.The ordinary least squares method(OLS)and the propensity score matching method(PSM)were used to estimate the environmental impact of exports.Through the analysis,exporters are cleaner than the non-exporters,and there is a negative correlation between the export intensity and the pollution emissions intensity.This paper analyzes the mechanism of export impact on the environment in detail.Through the mechanism analysis,it is found that exporters have a high removal rate of sulfur dioxide,which shows that exporters have a strong ability to control pollution and export enterprises have more R?D expenditure.Through the analysis of heterogeneity,it is concluded that the environmental performance of exporters and non-exporters is different in different industries,in different regions and varies depending on the type of ownership.In the pollution intensive industries,exporters are cleaner than the non-exporters;in the eastern regions,exporters are cleaner than non-exporters;exporters invested by Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan and invested by other domestic enterprises have lower emissions intensity than non-exporters.This paper also concludes that the change of pollution emissions intensity of exporters is mainly driven by the extensive margin(the change of enterprises'export status)rather than the intensive margin(the change of enterprises'export intensity).In the second part of the empirical study,this paper examines the impact of international trade on the environment under the background of China's accession to the WTO.The main method used is the difference in differences(DID).This paper takes China's accession to WTO as a policy shock to construct a“quasi natural experiment”,taking the normal export enterprises affected by tariff reduction as the treatment group and the processing export enterprises not affected by tariff reduction as the control group,this paper analyzes the impact of China's accession to WTO on the emission intensity of sulfur dioxide of export enterprises engaged in different forms of trade.It is found that China's accession to WTO will significantly reduce the intensity of sulfur dioxide emissions of export enterprises engaged in general trade.This paper tests the heterogeneity of the regression results from three dimensions of different pollution intensive industries,different regions and different ownership types,and then concludes that the impact of China's accession to WTO on sulfur dioxide emission intensity of general trading enterprises is heterogeneous in the above three dimensions.Through the mechanism analysis,it is concluded that the productivity level,R?D investment level and the level of intermediate input imported are the main mechanisms for China's entering into WTO to change SO₂ emission intensity of normal exporters.This paper also calculate import tariff at the industry level to measure tariff change after China's accessing to WTO.Conclusion shows that the reduction of import tariff makes the SO₂emission intensity of normal exporters decrease.In the third part of the empirical study,this paper investigates the impact of Chinese enterprises'participation in global value chain on the intensity of sulfur dioxide emissions.As we all know,the global value chain trade has become the main form of trade at present.This part of empirical research specifically analyzes whether enterprises participate in the global value chain and the degree of enterprises embedded in the global value chain can affect the intensity of sulfur dioxide emission or not.Empirical research shows that the enterprises participating in the global value chain have lower intensity of sulfur dioxide emission than those without entering into global value chain,and have lower intensity of sulfur dioxide emission than those enterprises only export.This paper uses the vertical specialization ratio of enterprises(VSS)to index the degree of enterprises embedding into the global value chain.The conclusion shows that the higher the degree of embedded global value chain,the lower the intensity of sulfur dioxide emission.Through rigorous mechanism test,this chapter concludes that the productivity level,R?D investment level and import intermediate level are the main mechanisms that lead to the low intensity of sulfur dioxide emission in enterprises to participate in the global value chain.The paper also further tests the heterogeneity of enterprises in different trade forms,different regions,different ownership types,different pollution intensive industries and different factor intensive industries.The research shows that enterprises engaged in processing trade will significantly reduce the intensity of sulfur dioxide emission if they participate in the global value chain;enterprises located in eastern region will significantly reduce the intensity of sulfur dioxide emission if they participate in the global value chain;enterprises invested by Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan will reduce the intensity of sulfur dioxide emission when they participate in the global value chain;enterprises belonging to pollution intensive industries will reduce the intensity of sulfur dioxide emission when they participate in the global value chain;enterprises belonging to labor intensive and technique intensive industries will reduce the intensity of sulfur dioxide emission when they participate in the global value chain.The results of the benchmark were tested by using PSM-DID and IV methods,which proved that the conclusions are still robust.This paper further concludes that the low intensity of sulfur dioxide emission of enterprises participating in the global value chain is mainly due to the leading role of extensive margin rather than intensive margin.Based on the above analysis,this paper puts forward the following policy recommendations:Based on the new pattern of“double circulation”of China's economy,we should unswervingly expand high-level opening to the outside world,implement the“going out”strategy,ensure that enterprises“going out”is in line with the pace of the country's opening to the outside world,introduce and learn advanced production technology,and firmly promote the construction of a trading power.We will implement the principles and policies of the party and the government for the prevention and control of environmental pollution,and earnestly implement the work of pollution prevention and control and pollution reduction.Specifically,enterprises should increase R?D investment,improve innovation and R?D level,make more use of cleaner production technology and pollution reduction equipment in the process of production and consumption,improve the productivity level of enterprises,replace fossil energy with clean energy,reduce pollution emission intensity of enterprises,and fight a tough battle of pollution prevention and control.Enterprises should actively participate in the global value chain,make full use of all kinds of dividends brought by the global value chain for enterprise production,and use more high-quality intermediate inputs for their own production.Gradually realize the transformation from factor driven to innovation driven,from structural upgrading to high-end links of the global value chain,pay more attention to product R?D and design,and promote Chinese manufacturing enterprises to climb to high-end links of the global value chain.To sum up,enterprises are the main body of trade and pollution emission.The production and consumption activities of enterprises are the basis for the smooth progress of trade and the implementation of pollution reduction.Therefore,from the perspective of enterprise production and consumption,studying the relationship between trade and environment will help to coordinate trade and environmental policies,and will also help to implement all the work to promote the construction of a trading power and win the battle of pollution prevention and control.