The Impact Of International Trade On Environmental Quality: An Empirical Analysis In Jiangsu Province

The issue of trade and environment became the focal point since 70s of 20th.Century, and the topic that the impact of international trade liberalization on environment caused intense discussion in recent years. As an open economy, Jiangsu Province has resulted in unprecedented foreign trade expansion since 1978, however, rapid growth puts huge pressures on the environment. In this background, study the affect of growing foreign trade of Jiangsu's on environmental quality, and how to coordinate the relationship between foreign trade growth and environment, has important oretical and practical significance for reinforcing energy conservation, improving trade competitiveness and achieving environmental friendly society of Jiangsu Province.In our study, we combined theoretical analysis and empirical tests with qualitative and quantitative analysis. As the econometric methods, we used time-series model, panel model and environmental Kuznets curve model to analyze the issues. In order to better grasp the situation in Jiangsu province, this paper not only analyzed from the integral status of Jiangsu Province, but also from the city level.Through the systematic analysis, this paper has achieved some conclusions, as follows:(1)The overall international trade situation of Jiangsu Province has been a good development, but there are also some problem as regional imbalances, mainly in processing.(2)There is a certain pressure on the environment in Jiangsu Province, and the water pollution is fairly conspicuous.(3)To the overall size of the international trade impacts on environmental quality, to the provincial level, water environment is deteriorating with the the expansion of the overall international trade size, but the atmospheric environment has been improving with the international trade expansion since 2005; to the city level, the stronger the foreign trade competitiveness is , the earlier to achieve the turning point that the impacts of international trade on environmental quality from negative to positive.(4)To the impacts of import and export on environmental quality, to the provincial level, export reduce the pressure of the environment in Jiangsu Province, while the import make the environment deteriorated; to the city level, import and export trade will produce different effects on their environment as different foreign trade competitiveness level, to the cities which have strong foreign trade competitiveness, export expansion is beneficial to the environment while import expansion is unbeneficial; to the cities which foreign trade competitiveness is middle, the situation is opposite, import expansion is beneficial to the environment,while export expansion is unbeneficial;to the cities which have weak or poor foreign trade competitiveness, export or import had little effect on the quality of the environment.This paper is divided into six parts, the first part is introduction, which describes the background and the significance of the paper, and give an overview of other scholars'researches; the second part introduced some related theories between the international trade and the environment; the third part is analyzed and summarized the foreign trade and the environment situation of the whole province and the city's; the fourth and the fifth section are empirical analysis, under the datas on international trade and environmental indicators of Jiangsu Province and 13 cities, used econometric methods to analyzed the impacts of international trade on environmental quality; the last part is summarized the paper and put forward countermeasures and suggestions to promote the coordinated development of international trade and the environment both from the government and enterprises'view.