Trade Openness,Economic Growth And Environmental Pollution

Since reform and opening up,China’s economic strength has grown rapidly,and the degree of trade openness has also improved greatly.However,while creating rich material wealth,the increasing environmental pollution has become a serious fact that China has to face.Environmental pollution not only seriously endangers public health,but also greatly hinders the sustainable development of economy and society,resulting in a loss of national income.Facing the severe ecological environment situation,how to improve the environmental quality and seek for an environmentally friendly and green development mode has become an urgent problem.As a large country,China has adopted a responsible attitude not only towards the current generation but also towards future generations.In order to reduce pollution emissions,the government has taken a series of measures,including adjusting the economic structure,optimizing the energy mix,and increasing investment in research and development.In particular,optimizing the economic structure is a priority for the central government.In the process of economic restructuring,trade openness plays an increasingly important role.Therefore,more and more scholars began to investigate the impact of trade openness on pollution.Considering that economic growth plays an important role,this paper also examines the impact of economic growth on environmental pollution.Assessing the impact of trade openness and economic growth on environmental pollution has important implications for China’s trade structure optimization,environmental governance and economic construction.Therefore,this paper explores the association between trade openness,economic growth and environmental pollution in China from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives,and proposes measures to curb pollution from the perspective of trade openness and economic growth.This study firstly combs and summarizes the existing relevant literature,and provides a brief review of the literature in related research areas,and points out the research gaps of the existing literature.Secondly,the analysis of the impact mechanism of environmental pollution from the perspective of trade openness and economic growth is carried out.By means of the above theories,the provincial environmental pollution levels were measured,and then the non-linear effects of trade openness on environmental pollution were explored using the semi-parametric addable panel model approach,while the cross term of trade openness and economic growth were introduced into the parameter part of the semi-parametric additive panel model to explore the scale effect of trade openness on pollution.In addition,to ensure the robustness of the study results,endogeneity test,parameter test,and model evaluation and selection were implemented.Following the above lines of research,three main conclusions are obtained in this paper: firstly,the impact of trade openness on environmental pollution presents an inverted “U-shaped”structure,indicating that the moderate trade openness can promote the improvement of environmental performance.Secondly,the impact of economic growth on environmental pollution presents an inverted "N-shaped" structure,indicating that the impact of economic growth on environmental pollution is not consistent with the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis.Thirdly,economic growth has a moderating effect on the relationship between trade openness and environmental pollution.Based on the empirical results,this study makes recommendations on how to promote China’s economic growth and curb ecological and environmental pollution.First of all,trade openness has an inverted “U-shaped” effect on the environmental pollution,and only when trade openness reaches a certain level can its improvement effect on the environment appear.With the increasing degree of trade openness,the number and scale of multinational companies entering China are gradually increasing,including pollution-intensive enterprises.In order to avoid the transfer of polluting industries from developed countries to China,Chinese government should improve its environmental protection supervision system so as to mitigate or avoid the adverse impact of pollution haven effect on the environment.Secondly,there is an inverse “N-shaped” relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution,but we cannot blindly assume that economic growth can automatically reduce pollution emissions.The government must implement a sustainable development strategy to achieve coordinated development of the economy and the environment and improve the quality of the economy.Finally,based on the perspective of the indirect effect of trade openness,Chinese government should prioritize the entry of green and clean industries with high technology and high efficiency to achieve sustainable social-economic development.At the same time,more stringent environmental protection policies should be formulated to avoid the phenomenon of pollution rebound.