A Research On The Determinative Factors Of Embodied Energy In Chinese Foreign Trade

In recent years, China is growing to an economic powers and goods trading powers, but the contradiction between energy supply and demand is becoming prominent increasingly, it should not be ignored that many energy problems are threatening our country’s economic security seriously. Previous studies mostly have made inspections from some certain angle such as energy structure, energy efficiency and direct trade of energy products, but researches which are related to foreign trade embodied energy is not heavy. In view of this, based on the concept of embodied energy, this paper estimates the embodied energy of China’s import and export commodities by input-output analysis method, and drawing lessons from Grossman and Krueger (1991,1993)’concept which was used to analysis the trade environmental effect of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), from the perspectives of import and export, this paper uses the econometric model to research the scale factors, structural factors, technology factors and market factors of trade embodied energy,which has carried on the static and dynamic analysis.Specifically, this article is divided into seven parts. The first chapter describes the research background, significance and research ideas. The second one reviews the related literature at home and abroad, then making a brief comment. The third chapter explores the theory foundation and survival mechanism about the determinative factors of embodied energy in Chinese trade. Paper in the fourth chapter analyzes the current situations of China’s foreign trade utilization、energy utilization and the change trend of export embodied energy intensity. In the fifth chapter, it uses the input-output analysis method to calculate each industry’s total energy consumption coefficients, and then measures each industry’s embodied energy. The sixth chapter uses the quantity of embodied energy in foreign trade as the explained variable, the trade scale, trade structure, energy intensity and trade competitiveness as the explanatory variables, respectively characterizing the scale factors, structural factors, technology factors and market factors, based on this, his paper builds two static models to test the different determinative factors on China’s trade embodied energy. At the same time, considering that there may be path dependence in embodied energy, this chapter will build two dynamic models on the basis of the previous static models to make a dynamic analysis. Chapter seven summarizes the conclusions of the research, and state relevant revelations and policy suggestions.Results shows that:First, the total energy consumption coefficients of all industries have a downward trend; Second, China’s import and export embodied energy presents a trend of increasing in amount, and the number keep the same roughly; Finally, in regard to the determinative factors of embodied energy in foreign trade, static empirical analysis shows that the key factors are scale factors, structural factors and technology factors, but not market factors, however, but the dynamic empirical analysis shows that embodied energy in export has a weak effect of path dependence, while imports has not; In addition, the scale of foreign trade and the energy intensity have more significant effects to trade embodied energy, and the influence directions agrees with its expectations; while the trade structure and trade competitiveness don’t have the impact obviously. According to theoretical analysis and empirical analysis, the author puts forward some specific policy recommendations as follow:continue to promote the transformation and upgrading of foreign trade in China; encourage imports moderately and promote trade balance reasonably; efforts to optimize the energy consumption structure and the trade structure; actively promote technical innovation to improve energy utilization efficiency; gradually perfect the the trade related laws and regulations about saving energy and reducing consumption to ensure the energy security of our country.