China’s international trade and air pollution: 2000 - 2009

Abstract:

As the world’s top trading country, China is now one of the most polluted regions worldwide. Much attention has been paid to the global impacts of Chinese pollution via atmospheric transport processes. However, a large portion of pollution produced in China is associated with its production of goods for foreign consumption via international trade. International trade allows for separation of regions producing and consuming the products, altering the spatial distribution of associated emissions and leading to substantial changes in regional air pollution and global transport. Along with China’s rapid economic growth in recent years, its economic-trade structure and volume has been changing all the time, resulting in large changes in total emissions and the shares of trade-related emissions. Our previous work has shown considerable variability in the contributions of export-related emissions to Chinese total emissions from 2000 to 2009.

Here, we attempt to assess the influence of China’s changing total and export-related emissions between 2000 and 2009 on its atmospheric pollution loadings and global impacts, by exploiting simulations of a global chemical transport model. Given the distinctive contributions of different economic sectors to pollutant emissions, we also attempt to investigate the sectoral contributions to pollution loadings and transport.

Our study will help understand the role of international trade in the trends and variability of Chinese pollution.