Analysis On Impact Of International Technology Transfer On Regional Environmental Quality In China

Under the background of the economic globalization and further development of regional economic integration, Environmental issues have become the focus of global attention. The advanced technology is one of the most effective ways to deal with international environmental problems. As two major carriers of advanced technology,international trade and FDI are the important channels for newly emerging countries to obtain the advanced technology from developed countries. After joining in WTO in 2001,a rapid growth of foreign trade, especially the technology trade, has been seen in China, and an active introduction of foreign investment has played a key rule in achieving the export-oriented economic development strategy. So it’s essential to do research on the effect of international technology transfer on environmental quality of China, and it is of great significance to balancing economic growth and environmental protection as well as achieving sustainable economic development.Using the panel data of 29 provinces during 1998-2013, this paper examined the influence of two types of international technology transfer on regional environment. This paper studies the technology effect of international trade and FDI technology spillover effect to see whether Pollution heaven hypothesis or Pollution Halo Theory holds. Considering differences lie in many aspects, the sample is divided into eastern, central, western three sub samples respectively in order to measure the impact of international technology transfer on environment in different areas. In order to solve the Endogenous problems in dynamic panel model, Sys-GMM estimation method is used to obtain robust regression results. It turns out that international technology transfer have generated significant positive effects on the improvement of environment and strengthen of environmental regulation. Furthermore, the positive effect of FDI technology transfer has hysteresis characteristics. According to the estimates of three sub samples, According to the estimates of three sub samples, technology transfer by technology trade plays a positive and significant role in promoting environmental quality of eastern region but this effect on central and western areas is not statistically significant. FDI promotes the level of environmental regulation in the eastern and western regions through technical effect significantly, which provides evidence consistent with the existence of pollution halo theory, but the empirical research indicates that FDI has an negative effect on environmental quality in the central region.