Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Environmental Economic Geography in ChinaIs There a Trade-Related Pollution Trap for China?

Environmental Economic Geography in China: Is There a Trade-Related Pollution Trap for China? [This chapter examines the changing position of China within the global shift of environmental burdens. This chapter revisits the pollution haven hypothesis from an innovative perspective. It argues that economic growth does not always reverse the pollution haven behaviour, even if one economy shifts from low-income to high-income. Instead, economic catching-up exposes one economy to a risk of converging pollution contents in trading products. Then, the trade of catching-up economies with both developed and developing economies generates significant pressures on the domestic environment. This chapter proposes the term “pollution trap” to define this phenomenon. Based on the case of China, this chapter applies the multi-regional input-output analysis to trace the distribution of pollution embodied in China’s foreign trade. Then it further uses the fixed effect model to examine the causes of the “pollution trap” phenomenon. Empirical evidence from China supports the existence of the “pollution trap”. Environmental regulation keeps China from becoming a pollution haven of developed economies rather than relocating polluting production to other developing economies. Furthermore, the current intra-industry trade of low value-added products worsens China’s environmental performance. The diluting advantage of labour and the accumulating advantage of capital keep China specialising in polluting production.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Environmental Economic Geography in ChinaIs There a Trade-Related Pollution Trap for China?

Download PDF
21 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/environmental-economic-geography-in-china-is-there-a-trade-related-7h5TfSkmTo
Publisher
Springer Singapore
Copyright
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
ISBN
978-981-15-8990-4
Pages
201 –222
DOI
10.1007/978-981-15-8991-1_8
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[This chapter examines the changing position of China within the global shift of environmental burdens. This chapter revisits the pollution haven hypothesis from an innovative perspective. It argues that economic growth does not always reverse the pollution haven behaviour, even if one economy shifts from low-income to high-income. Instead, economic catching-up exposes one economy to a risk of converging pollution contents in trading products. Then, the trade of catching-up economies with both developed and developing economies generates significant pressures on the domestic environment. This chapter proposes the term “pollution trap” to define this phenomenon. Based on the case of China, this chapter applies the multi-regional input-output analysis to trace the distribution of pollution embodied in China’s foreign trade. Then it further uses the fixed effect model to examine the causes of the “pollution trap” phenomenon. Empirical evidence from China supports the existence of the “pollution trap”. Environmental regulation keeps China from becoming a pollution haven of developed economies rather than relocating polluting production to other developing economies. Furthermore, the current intra-industry trade of low value-added products worsens China’s environmental performance. The diluting advantage of labour and the accumulating advantage of capital keep China specialising in polluting production.]

Published: Oct 18, 2020

There are no references for this article.