Empirical Analysis On The Influence Of Trade Liberalizaiton On Environmental Pollution

In recent years, China’s economy has maintained rapid development, import andexport trade volume has also been rising, especially since the accession to the WTO,China’s foreign trade volume has been growing rapidly. At the same time,environment quality is also deteriorating, air pollution, water pollution and solidwaste pollution problems are outstanding. A large number of scholars do theoreticaland empirical research about the relationship between trade and environment, whichgets many favorable conclusions. It makes sense to research the relationship betweentrade liberalization and China’s environmental pollution.Based on the analysis of the research situation, firstly, this paper analyzes theChina’s trade and environment pollution status, and then makes theoretical analysis ofhow trade liberalization affect a country’s environment. On this basis, using our10-year period2000-2009,30provinces, municipalities, panel data, six environmentalpollution index including industrial wastewater, industrial waste, industrial sulfurdioxide, industrial smoke and industrial dust emissions, and industrial solid wastegeneration, this paper dose empirical research to analyze the differences of the effectwhich trade liberalization to environment with regard to different pollutionindicators. And then, this paper divides China into east, central and western threeregion to study the regional differences of trade liberalization on China’s environmentpollution. The final conclusion is as follow: both pollution haven and factorabundance motives determine the trade-induced composition effect. The effects oftrade liberalization on China’s environmental pollution are different due to differentpollution indicators. With regard to the industrial gas emissions and industrial sulfurdioxide emissions,the conclusion shows that trade liberalization is not conducive toimproving the quality of our environment, and the conclusion shows that the overalleffect of trade liberalization on China’s environmental pollution is uncertain withregard to other pollution indicators.Empirical results show that there are regionaldifferences in the effect of trade liberalization on China’s environmental pollution,trade liberalization is bad for China’s environmental quality with regard to thecentral and western areas; and the effect of trade liberalization on China’senvironmental pollution is uncertain with regard to eastern region.Finally, based on the conclusions, this paper proposes some policy recommendations to improve china’s environmental quality.