Measurement Of Embodied Carbon And Analysis Of Its Influencing Factors In Sino-Japan Trade

Climate change is one of the huge challenges to the international community today. Human extensive use of fossil fuels leads to a sharp increase in greenhouse gas emissions which causes global warming. Therefore, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become an important task for all the countries.Since China’s reform and opening up, China’s foreign trade has grown rapidly especially after the accessing of the WTO. Although the rapid growth in foreign trade contributes greatly to the economic growth of China, it may inevitably bring about many negative impacts to the environment of China and the world. China’s sustain growing emission of carbon dioxide has aroused the widespread concern from the international communities. China is suffering from the stress to reduce the greenhouse gas emission.China and Japan are the two major economic entities in the Asian-Pacific region. The bilateral trade between these two countries has been developing rapidly in the latest ten years. In2012, Japan has become China’s second largest trading partner while China is Japan’s largest trading partner. Sino-Japan trade not only plays a vital role in China’s economic growth, but also has an impact on China’s environment. In this context, the study of the relationship of Sino-Japan trade and embodied carbon emissions has both important practical and theoretical significance for China’s sustainable development of the economy and the environmental protection of China and the world.The dissertation adopts the method of quantitative analysis. Through applying the related data from the WIOD database and taking the export and re-export of intermediate goods into consideration, the dissertation builds up the multi-regional input-output model and measures the carbon embodied in the trade of China and Japan. The dissertation calculates how the Sino-Japan trade impacted China’s carbon emission, and at the same time, the net effect is analyzed in the Sino-Japan trade on global greenhouse gas emissions. Further, the dissertation made an empirical analysis of how the factors of China-Japan trade structure, the scale of the trade et al influence the carbon embodied in the Sino-Japan trade.The dissertation gets three conclusions:(1) China’s environmental techniques industries had improved significantly during1995-2009, but there is still a certain gap compared with Japan.(2) The balance of trade emission of China remained in surplus, presented first fall then rise in the period of1995-2009. Trade polluted condition, although a continuous decline in the industry, but remained at above1in2009, which means the trade of these industries caused pollution to China’s environment.(3) Japan transferred the carbon emission to. China through trade.15years of Sino-Japan trade, the net effect of global greenhouse gas emission increased by280.26million tons, formed a "carbon leakage" phenomenon.The end of the dissertation, in view of the above research conclusion, proposed four corresponding political suggestions:to optimize the energy structure of China; to accelerate the environmental technical innovation of China’s industries; to adjust China’s trade structure, to take an active part in international negotiations on climate change.