Research On The Impact Of Carbon Emission Trading Policy On The International Competitiveness Of China’s High-carbon Industry

From the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol to The Paris Agreement and its implementation rules,countries around the world have gradually reached the common goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by means of "national independent contribution" to emission reduction,developing a green and sustainable growth mode,and carrying out international cooperation in various fields.As an important promoter of global governance,China is also facing profound changes in the transformation of economic development to innovation driven,green and low-carbon.It is urgent to control the environmental cost of economic activities.In this context,the implementation of China’s carbon trading policy has attracted much attention.Under the framework of carbon trading policy,carbon emission right is recognized as a tradable property right,and the economic activities of enterprises will be constrained by the holding amount of this property right.When there is no carbon emission right,they either choose to reduce their own carbon emission or buy the carbon emission rights of other holders;When there is a surplus of carbon emission rights,it can choose to continue to hold or sell in the carbon market according to the carbon trading price.This unique market mechanism makes emission reduction not only have environmental benefits,but also create economic benefits for enterprises.The pilot work of China’s carbon trading policy was launched in 2011.Since2013,the pilot work has been officially launched in 7 provinces and cities such as Beijing,Shanghai,Tianjin,Chongqing,Guangdong,Hubei and Shenzhen,and a new Fujian carbon trading pilot was added at the end of 2016.The pilot projects mainly involve high carbon emission industries such as paper industry,petrochemical industry,chemical industry,building materials industry,iron and steel industry,nonferrous industry,electric power industry and aviation service industry.Today’s Chinese economy has been deeply integrated with the world economy,and the products of the pilot industry have opened the competition in the international market.The implementation of carbon trading policy has obvious cost and benefit effects on pilot industry enterprises,and whether this will affect their international competitiveness is worth analyzing and testing.According to the pilot progress of China’s carbon trading policy,this thesis selects six high carbon emission manufacturing industries such as paper industry,petrochemical industry,chemical industry,building materials industry,iron and steel industry and nonferrous industry as sample industries,and uses the national industry level export data from2008 to 2017 to calculate the explicit comparative advantage index(RCA)of each highcarbon industry to measure its international competitiveness,it is found that in the sample period,except for China’s building materials industry,the international competitiveness of the other five types of high-carbon industries is weak.At the same time,combined with relevant theories and research,this thesis combs the possible paths of carbon trading policy affecting the international competitiveness of high-carbon industries,mainly summarized as cost effect,benefit effect,policy signal effect,innovation effect and mediating effect through influencing innovation,and puts forward the theoretical hypothesis that the impact of carbon trading policy on the international competitiveness of China’s high-carbon industries will have a U-shaped trend,and it is still in the decline stage of U-shaped trend in the sample period,which has a weakening effect.On this basis,this thesis collates the panel data of provinces and industries from 2008 to 2017,constructs a model with material capital,human capital,labor productivity,R & D investment and foreign capital scale as control variables,and makes an empirical analysis on whether carbon trading policy affects the international competitiveness of high-carbon industries by using the Differences-in-Differences method,Parallel trend and placebo tests are conducted on the empirical results to ensure the reliability of the empirical conclusions.In addition,this thesis also makes an empirical analysis on the dynamic effect and mediating effect of carbon trading policy on the international competitiveness of high-carbon industries.The results show that the impact of China’s carbon trading policy pilot on the international competitiveness of high-carbon industries is indeed in the downward range of U-shaped trend,that is,it shows a weakening effect,and this weakening effect has an obvious dynamic effect in the sample period,which shows that the negative impact is strong and rising in the initial stage of policy implementation,and tends to weaken after two years of implementation.Innovation activities have some mediating effects on this role.In the downward range of U-shaped impact trend,carbon trading policy further increases the shortterm cost pressure by increasing innovation investment,so as to enhance the weakening effect on the international competitiveness of high-carbon industries.In this regard,this thesis believes that in order to accelerate the role of carbon trading policy in improving the international competitiveness of China’s relevant industries,we should strive to further improve the carbon trading policy system and guide enterprises to reduce emissions through technological innovation and process upgrading;relevant enterprises should also pay attention to improving innovation ability and factor allocation efficiency,and use carbon trading policy mechanism to enhance international competitiveness.