The Impact Of Environmental Regulation Distance On China’s Export

Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has made brilliant achievements,while environmental problems have become increasingly frequent.From "green mountains and green hills are Jinshan Yinshan" to "carbon neutrality and carbon peaking",China’s environmental awareness and its role as a big country in recent years are all reflected.Environmental regulation is a powerful tool for governments to protect the environment,which is closely related to the strict degree of government environmental protection and manifested through the intensity of environmental regulation.In order to jointly protect the environment,most countries(regions)in the world reached a consensus at the Paris Climate Conference and signed the Paris Agreement,so environmental regulation will be paid more attention in the world.In addition,faced with unprecedented changes in the past century,frequent rise of trade protectionism and unilateralism in the world,and failure of WTO functions,regional free trade agreements have injected powerful impetus into regional and even world economic development.In this context,RCEP has many good things.Although it has gone through twists and turns,it has finally reached a consensus on cooperation,which has come into effect in most member countries.RCEP,as the largest free trade agreement in the world,is bound to have great potential.Diversification of RCEP member countries will also bring diversification of environmental regulation.This thesis takes environmental regulation and RCEP agreement as the starting point,and takes the difference of relative environmental regulation intensity between the two countries as the direction,and explores the impact of environmental regulation distance on China’s exports within RCEP member countries.Firstly,this thesis is based on the theories related to environmental regulation,And from the cost effect,technological innovation effect,product structure effect and market access effect four aspects of the impact of environmental regulation on exports,finally think that the impact of environmental regulation on exports to consider the impact of these four aspects of positive effects and negative effects between the strong and weak contrast.Secondly,the relevant characteristics of China and RCEP countries are described in two aspects: export trade and environmental regulation distance.On the one hand,the overall scale of China’s exports to RCEP countries is stable and occupies a large proportion,the export market is diversified and the export product structure is reasonable;On the other hand,China’s environmental regulation intensity has been improved.Compared with RCEP developed countries,there is still a certain gap in environmental regulation distance,but the gap has a downward trend,and compared with other RCEP developing countries,the environmental regulation distance is also significantly reduced.Finally,an empirical analysis is made based on the product-level data of China’s exports to RCEP countries from2002 to 2019.On the basis of robustness analysis,the empirical data are further divided into two categories to study the heterogeneity.The empirical study finds that environmental regulation distance has a significant deterrent effect on China’s product exports,specifically on polluting products more than on clean products,and on intermediate and capital goods more than on final consumer goods.This indicates that the negative effects of cost,product structure,and market access effects are stronger than the positive effects of technological innovation effects the farther the distance of environmental regulations,the greater the impediment to polluting products and intermediate and capital goods in the production process.Based on the findings,this paper proposes countermeasures from four aspects: the "prompting" role of environmental regulation distance,the business environment related to institutional distance,the corresponding corporate social responsibility of enterprises and the technological innovation effect: First,pay attention to environmental regulation distance and adjust the intensity of environmental regulation.Second,rely on the RCEP agreement to create a better business environment.Third,enterprises should improve their ecological position and respond positively to relevant policies.Fourth,give full play to the effect of technological innovation to cope with the export hindrance situation.