| With the deepening of globalization and international economic integration,the issue of upgrading the Global Value Chains(GVC)has been elevated to a national strategic level.Since the reform and opening up,China has continued to promote the reform of its economic system and adhere to the strategy of opening up to the outside world,which has been embedded in the development system of GVC,and has achieved large-scale material accumulation and miraculous economic growth by relying on its strong endowment advantage and investment drive.Especially since its accession to the WTO,foreign trade has become an important driving force for China’s economic growth.However,under the realistic conditions of a more complex international situation,evolving trade patterns and green trade barriers constraints,China’s industry sectors have experienced large fluctuations in the sources of trade intermediates,division of labor positions and market shares in the process of embedding in GVC.And it gradually shows significant structural change characteristics,which to a certain extent affects the value chain upgrading and high-quality development of China’s industry sectors.At the same time,since China has long been in the production and manufacturing link downstream of GVC and mainly involved in processing trade,a large number of energy consumption and environmental pollution problems have arisen in the development process,among which the surge of carbon emissions is particularly prominent.However,it is noteworthy that with the vertical extension of GVC and the continuous refinement of industrial division of labor,the industry sectors embedded in GVC gradually appear to be decoupled from the production and consumption links.The carbon emissions generated in GVC,in addition to the industry’s own consumption,are more often generated along with the development of intermediate goods trade.At this time,it is necessary to consider the direct carbon emissions and indirect carbon emission factors of the industry sectors and measure the carbon emission level of the industry sectors from the perspective of embodied carbon emissions.Based on this,this paper tries to study the impact of structural changes in GVC on the lowcarbon development of China’s industry sectors from the perspective of embodied carbon emissions based on Krugman’s industrial equilibrium model and Markusen’s factory location theory.Specifically,using the world input-output database,this paper firstly clarifies the formation mechanism of GVC structural changes from the theoretical level,and on this basis,systematically quantifies and analyzes the characteristic facts of GVC structural changes according to the differences in the sources of intermediate goods,differences in the location of division of labor and differences in market shares of industry sectors.Secondly,this paper measures the embodied carbon emissions of China’s industry sectors by constructing an inputoutput model,and investigates the driving factors of embodied carbon emissions by using a structural decomposition model.Again,combining with Copeland and Taylor’s trade pollution model,this paper incorporates the embodied carbon emissions of industry sectors into trade decisions,constructs a theoretical model of GVC structural changes affecting the embodied carbon emissions of industry sectors,and investigates its impact on the embodied carbon emissions of China’s industry sectors at three levels,namely,the change of GVC participation,the change of location and the change of distribution pattern,in conjunction with the formation mechanism of GVC structural changes.Finally,based on the research findings,suggestions for countermeasures to promote the development of low-carbon trade in China’s industry sectors are proposed in the context of the macroscopic background of climate change and economic globalization.The relevant research findings can be summarized as follows.First,the China’s industry sectors show significant structural change characteristics in GVC.Firstly,the forward participation in GVC of China’s industry sectors has been increasing,while the backward participation in GVC has decreased,indicating that the China’s industry sectors have improved their ability to embed in GVC forward and gradually embed in GVC mainly by providing intermediate goods.Secondly,the GVC location index of China’s industry sectors have been increasing,especially achieving a rapid climb after 2003,indicating that China’s industry sectors have become deeper and deeper in the length of production in GVC,and the ability of specialized division of labor and production level have improved.Finally,the market shares and industrial concentration levels of China’s industry sectors in GVC have been increasing,and the resource allocation ability in GVC has been effectively improved.Second,the embodied carbon emissions of China’s industry sectors are generally on an increasing trend.The overall dimension increases from 3.242 billion tons in 2000 to 8.757 billion tons in 2014,with an average annual growth rate of 7.36%,among which the secondary industry is the main source of the growth of China’s embodied carbon emissions.Meanwhile,the decomposition of the drivers of embodied carbon emissions in China’s industrial sector reveals that the scale effect significantly contributes to the growth of embodied carbon emissions in China’s industry sectors,while the carbon emission technology effect is an important driver for China’s industry sectors to achieve carbon emission reduction.Third,according to the formation mechanism and theoretical analysis of the structural changes of GVC,the impact of GVC participation changes,GVC location changes and GVC distribution pattern changes on the embodied carbon emissions of China’s industry sectors are studied at three levels,and the results show that: firstly,there are strong differences in the effects of forward and backward GVC participation on the embodied carbon emissions in China’s industry sectors,in which the effect of forward GVC participation on the embodied carbon emissions in China’s industry sectors has an inverted "U" shape,while the effect of backward GVC participation on the embodied carbon emissions in China’s industry sectors has a significant positive effect,and this result still holds after passing the "U" shape relationship test(U-test).Secondly,the impact of GVC position change on the embodied carbon emissions of China’s industry sectors is in the shape of inverted "U",but most industry sectors have not yet crossed the inflection point,indicating that the GVC position of China’s industry sectors is still at a low level in the study interval.The analysis of influence mechanisms shows that energy consumption and embodied carbon emission efficiency are important mechanisms by which changes in the location of GVC affect embodied carbon emissions in China’s industry sectors.Finally,combining the measures of GVC distribution pattern change and the empirical results,this paper find that increasing the industrial concentration in the GVC system can significantly reduce the embodied carbon emissions in China’s industry sectors.At the same time,the impact mechanism analysis shows that industrial concentration can reduce the embodied carbon emissions of China’s industry sectors by increasing the total factor productivity and revealed comparative advantage of China’s industry sectors.Compared with the existing studies,this paper has the following innovations in the study of the impact of structural changes of GVC on the embodied carbon emissions of China’s industry sectors.Firstly,based on the realistic background of climate change and economic globalization,the embodied carbon emissions of China’s industry sectors are included in the study,which break through the limitation of mainly focusing on the direct carbon emissions of industry sectors in the past.Secondly,through theoretical analysis,the formation mechanism of structural changes in GVC is proposed,and the structural changes in GVC are further subdivided into three dimensions: changes in GVC participation,changes in GVC location,and changes in GVC distribution pattern.On this basis,the embodied carbon emissions of the industry sectors are incorporated into the trade decision model,and a theoretical model of structural changes in GVC affecting the embodied carbon emissions of the industry sectors is constructed,which provides a solid theoretical foundation for the full analysis.Finally,based on the existing theoretical framework,countermeasure suggestions are proposed to promote the low-carbon development of China’s industry sectors in terms of policy orientation,energysaving potential and production model transformation,with a view to providing empirical references for China’s industry sectors to strive for a more equitable and reasonable space for carbon emissions,enhance the competitiveness of industrial low-carbon trade and cope with the restrictions of green trade barriers. |
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