Measurement and Driving Factors of China's Foreign Trade-Embodied Carbon Emissions from the Perspective of the Digital Economy
In recent years,the vigorous rise of the digital economy has profoundly reshaped the pattern of China's economic development.Its extensive penetration and integration have not only promoted rapid economic growth but also imperceptibly produced far-reaching impacts on the ecological environment and global climate.In this process,economic expansion is often accompanied by an increase in energy consumption.China,as one of the major contributors to global carbon emissions,faces a particularly pressing challenge to reduce carbon emissions.This article,from the perspective of the digital economy,uses the global multi-regional input-output model and the EXIOBASE database to estimate China's foreign trade-embodied carbon emissions during 2013-2022 and conducts a structural decomposition analysis of the driv-ing factors behind carbon emissions.The article finds that compared to the overall growth rate of China's foreign trade-embodied carbon emissions,the growth rate of China's foreign trade-embodied carbon emissions from the perspective of the digital economy is higher.Heavy manufacturing,digitally intensive manufacturing,and the energy industry are the three sectors with the highest for-eign trade-embodied carbon emissions from the perspective of the digital economy.Over the entire study period,the scale effect was the largest driver of the growth in foreign trade-embodied carbon emissions from the perspective of the digital economy,while the carbon intensity effect was the primary factor in mitigating the growth of foreign trade-embodied car-bon emissions.Heavy manufacturing and digitally intensive manufacturing were the main sectors where the carbon inten-sity effect played a role in carbon reduction.The digital dependency effect has to some extent promoted the growth of em-bodied carbon emissions in China's imports and exports from the perspective of the digital economy,while it has slowed the growth of the net value of trade-embodied carbon emissions.The digital dependency effect's contribution to the growth of China's export-embodied carbon emissions from the digital economy perspective primarily originates from the domestic digital dependency effect,while its contribution to the growth of import-embodied carbon emissions and the sup-pression of the trade-embodied carbon net value from the digital economy perspective primarily originates from the foreign digital dependency effect.Based on the above conclusions,this article puts forward the following policy recommendations:Firstly,to address the imbalance in embodied carbon emissions from imports and exports from the perspective of the digital economy,it is essential to make reasonable use of domestic and international markets to adjust the structure of import and export prod-ucts.Secondly,in response to the carbon emission growth driven by the digital dependency effect,it is necessary to guide industrial digitalization properly.Digitally intensive manufacturing sectors should suppress the consumption of high-energy-consuming and high-carbon-content products and reduce carbon emissions in the production.For non-core sectors of the digital economy,it is important to fully assess the potential environmental impacts of digital technologies when they are introduced.To reduce carbon emissions,excessive reliance on carbon-intensive digital infrastructure should be avoided to reduce unnecessary electricity and resource consumption.Thirdly,to address the prominent carbon emission growth in heavy manufacturing,digital manufacturing,and the energy industry from the perspective of the digital economy,China could adjust its industrial structure,optimizing the digital production and application in heavy manufac-turing,digital manufacturing,and the energy industry.The marginal contributions of this article primarily include two aspects.Firstly,it constructs a multi-regional input-output model to measure China's foreign trade-embodied carbon emissions from the perspective of the digital economy.The EXIOBASE database is used to calculate the digitalization coefficient and then the output of the non-digital economy core sector that depends on the input of the digital economy core sector is separated.The output of the digital economy core sector and the output of the non-digital economy core sector that depends on the input of the digital economy core sec-tor together constitute the total output from the perspective of the digital economy.The calculation of China's foreign trade-embodied carbon emissions from the perspective of the digital economy is further completed based on the above cal-culation.This model analyzes the characteristics of China's foreign trade-embodied carbon emissions from both total and sectoral dimensions.Secondly,using the above measurement model,this article employs the structural decomposition analysis to examine the driving factors behind changes in China's foreign trade-embodied carbon emissions from the digi-tal economy perspective.It incorporates the digital dependency effect,a special effect that reflects the impact of changes in the dependency of non-core digital economy sectors on core digital economy sectors on export-embodied carbon emis-sions,which can be termed the digital dependency effect.
Digital EconomyTrade-Embodied Carbon EmissionsMulti-Regional Input-Output ModelStruc-tural Decomposition Analysis
万方数据
维普
