Has China-ASEAN Trade opening increased China’s carbon emissions?

This study uses carbon emission data at the provincial level in China between 1998–2018 and the proportion of the total import and export trade between provinces and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in GDP to measure the level of China-ASEAN trade openness. It examines the impact of China-ASEAN trade openness on carbon emissions and its transmission mechanism, and selects the RMB/USD exchange rate as an instrumental variable to address the endogeneity of China-ASEAN trade openness variables. The impact of China-ASEAN trade openness on China’s environment is estimated within a two-stage least squares framework. The results show that trade openness between China and ASEAN positively impacts China’s environment and can facilitate carbon emission reduction. The scale, structural, and technology effects brought by China-ASEAN trade liberalization jointly promote China’s carbon dioxide emission reduction. An inverted “U” relationship is found between economic growth and environmental quality in China, and some provinces and municipalities have now crossed the inflection point of the curve, in which carbon emi-ssions decrease with an increase in per capita wealth.