The Effects Of International Trade On Environmental Pollution In China

In the background of opening to the outside world and joining the WTO, China’s foreigntrade has made rapid development.Now China has been a large trade country in the world.The foreign trade has a very close relationship with the environment because the resourcesand environment is needed to support the booming development of foreign trade.Afterentering the21st century, China’s environmental pollution events occur frequently such as airpollution, water pollution and so on. The series of environmental problems grow day by day.People pay more attention to environmental problems. At the same time, the internationaltrade requests the improved_product cleanliness. The Chinese foreign trade is facing a newblock called the “green barriers”. It will influete the development of China’s foreign trade andprompt us to think of the relationship between foreign trade and the environment.This article is based on the relavantdata of provincial foreign trade and industrial "threewastes" in our country from1995to2010and makes references the researching idea about theforeign trade and environmental effect which is proposed by Grossman and Krueger.Combining theoretical and empirical analysis, we find that:(1) China’s foreign trade has beenvery rapidly developed, and the industrial structure and the regional development of the tradehave been constantly improved. However, foreign trade in our country is still in surplus andexport products are dominated by industrial products. The scale of environmental pollution isconstantly expanding, especially the emissions of industrial SO2. With the risie of theMid-western economy, the environmental pollution is increasing in the Mid-western region.(2) China’s environmental pollution situation has a significant positive correlation, as a whole.The eastern region’s environmental pollution emissions has spillover effect and theenvironment pollution exists accumulation effect in the Mid-west region.(3) Having thedecomposition of foreign trade environment effect analysis we found that: exports is notconducive to the improvement of the environment in our country; the environmental impactof imports and the trade structure effect in eastern, central and western regions have differentperformance; The technical effect of trade in the Mid–eastern region is conducive to theimprovement of environmental quality, but in the west it shows the opposite conclusion. Onthe whole, the trade effect of technology would improve the condition of the environment.