Was China's Accession to the WTO Bad for Chinese Air Quality?

Probably not, find Haakon Vennemo, Kristin Aunan, Jianwu He, Tao Hu, Shantong Li and Kristin Rypd3al: Environmental impacts of China's WTO-accession (Center For International Climate and Environmental Research working paper, Oslo, 2005); Environmental impacts of China's WTO-accession (Ecological Economics, February 2008):

China's accession to the WTO in 2001 completed the country's entry into the global economy. We investigate environmental implications of WTO-accession. There are several hypotheses in this area: The scale hypothesis says that production is scaled up and in turn, pollution increases. The technique hypothesis says that production methods become cleaner and pollution decreases. The composition hypothesis says that composition of industries changes and pollution reflects the new composition. We analyse the relative strength of the hypotheses by means of an environmental CGE-model, and in the case of air pollution find support for a composition effect in favour of clean industries. Thanks to the composition effect, emissions to air of greenhouse gases fall. Emissions of particles and SO₂ also fall, but emissions of NO_x and VOC rise. Since particle and SO₂-emissions fall we estimate that public health improves.

From the conclusion:

We have found that WTO accession improves China's environment as far as main air pollutants are concerned. There are also gains to public health and aggregate welfare, but the distribution becomes more skewed. The reason for these developments is that WTO induces a new course for industry growth. The textile and apparel industries, already China's largest export earners, gain tremendous momentum and increase close to 50% after WTO-accession. The growth of these and industries supplying their inputs draw resources from heavy industry and from agriculture. In short we find a “composition effect” that is favourable to the environment.

Thanks to Rob Elliott at Globalisation and the Environment for the pointer.

Other posts on trade and the environment are here: Environment - pollution haven posts specifically, here: Pollution haven.

Comments

[Emmanuel]

Good find. I featured an article that not only suggested FDI did not give rise to the PHH in China, but also reduced sulfur dioxide, soot, and solid waste emissions on a provincial basis:

http://ipezone.blogspot.com/2008/02/nope-fdi-aint-behind-chinas-rampant.html

I am becoming increasingly convinced that Chinese pollution is largely homegrown.