Abstract
Thirty years after its ‘opening and reform’, China earned its reputation as the ‘factory of the world’. China’s rise to become, according to some reports, the largest single emitter of greenhouse gases is closely linked to its economic growth, particularly the export sector that has driven this growth.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The issue was first raised on 4 June 2007 by Ma Kai, Director of the National Development and Reform Commission, at a press conference on China’s National Programme on Climate Change. It was reiterated at the Bali conference by his deputy, **e Zhenhua, the head of the Chinese delegation to the 13th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC) Serving as the 3rd Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP13/MOP3).
- 3.
Since an emissions deficit in one country is a surplus for another country, this cannot imply a reduction in global emissions, but does affect the distribution between countries.
- 4.
I represents the identity matrix.
- 5.
Note that M here includes all imports, whether for domestic consumption or the processing trade.
- 6.
See Muradian et al. (2002).
- 7.
China Statistical Yearbook 2006 (NBS, various years). Note that there are nevertheless sectoral differences between our estimates and reported figures because we estimate intensity per unit of final demand while official statistics are based on unit of value added.
- 8.
This conversion rate is based on CAIT (Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, an information and analysis tool on global climate change developed by the WRI, cait.wri.org). The conversion factor between toe and tce is approximately 1:1.43.
- 9.
Hong Kong operates an independent trading system, but since April 2003 has been a party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) as a part of China.
- 10.
We attribute this energy intensity to the full value of imported goods, assuming away any role for the processing trade in the country of origin. These linkages are hard to trace for single-country studies, but would emerge naturally from a comprehensive study that combined the input–output tables of all countries.
- 11.
As noted earlier, there are many components to a consumption account, of which the emissions embodied in trade estimated here are only one. Others include transportation and tourism.
- 12.
According to WRI CAIT, the emission factor in 2006 is 0.86 tC/toe, larger than the figure of 0.83 tC/toe in 2002. Using WRI emissions factor, total emission of CO2 from fossil-fuel combustion is estimated at 5500 mt CO2, which is lower than figure 6200 mt given in the study by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (2007). Please note our figure does not include emission from industrial processes, such as cement production and methane.
- 13.
If purchasing power parity (PPP) is used, the figures for China would be close to world averages. For example, in 2005 the world average was 0.209 kgoe/$US PPP and 0.219 kgoe/$US PPP.
- 14.
WRI CAIT.
- 15.
Based on the Shanghai Securities Daily, 22 June 2007.
- 16.
Of course, we are abstracting from transportation emissions which necessarily rise when production is relocated abroad.
- 17.
The exercise is only a hypothetical one; in practice, had the USA produced these goods the structure of its economy would be altered and its energy intensity would be endogenous to the alternative pattern of trade and industrial structure.
- 18.
However, the legality of border tariff adjustments remains unclear. See Deal (2008) for a summary.
- 19.
IEA World Energy Outlook 2006, Summary, p. 3.
- 20.
Standard per capita emissions measures are undertaken on a production basis and so fail fully to reflect equality in emissions consumption that they usually aim to express. For example, with a population of 1.3 billion, our analysis suggests that Chinese consumption emissions per capita would be 3.5 t CO2 in 2006, compared to 4.8 t CO2 on a produced-emissions basis.
- 21.
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Pan, J., Phillips, J., Chen, Y. (2022). China’s Balance of Emissions Embodied in Trade: Approaches to Measurement and Allocating International Responsibility. In: Political Economy of China’s Climate Policy. Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8789-1_4
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