关键词: 碳排放, 进口贸易, 技术溢出, 影响因素, 中亚五国

Abstract:

The five Central Asian countries are the commercial throat of the Land Silk Road, and their strategic position is important. The five Central Asian countries and China depend on each other geographically and promote each other’s economy and trade. The five Central Asian countries are the gateway and transit point of China’s land corridor connecting Europe, while China is the support and shortcut for the five Central Asian countries to move to the Pacific Ocean. Recently, the pace of economic and trade cooperation between China and the five Central Asian countries has accelerated, and remarkable achievements have been made in trade, investment, economic and technological cooperation, and financial cooperation. Between 1992 and 2018, processing the changes in carbon emissions in the five Central Asian countries using Kuznets curve of carbon emissions to simulate the relationship between carbon emissions per capita and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, then combing with indicators of GDP per capita, the total value added of industry, R&D investment and technology spillover stock of imported intermediate and capital goods from China to construct a panel data with fixed-effect model to explore the impact mechanism of carbon emissions in the five Central Asian countries. (1) The study finds the carbon emissions of the five Central Asian countries, which decreased and then increased; the rate of change of carbon emissions has fluctuated. The carbon emissions in Kazakhstan accounted for the largest proportion among the five Central Asian countries. (2) In relation to the Kuznets curve of carbon emission and GDP per capita, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan exhibit an inverted N-shaped model. Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the five Central Asian countries as a whole are N-shaped models. (3) The five Central Asian countries’ imports from China have grown, and the intermediate and capital goods have accounted for 3.920% to 10.976% of the total imports from China. In addition, the technology spillover stock of imported intermediate goods from China has exceeded that of imported capital goods in the five Central Asian countries. (4) Considering the factors that affect the carbon emissions of the five Central Asian countries, the regression coefficients of GDP per capita and the proportion of industrial added value in GDP are positive. For every 1% increase in GDP per capita and the proportion of industrial added value in GDP, carbon emissions will increase by 0.337% and 0.343%, respectively. The regression coefficients of R&D investment and the interaction term of LnZJ_it×LnS_it are negative. For every 1% increase in R&D investment, carbon emissions can decrease by about 0.432%. For carbon emission reduction, caused by the increase in the proportion of industrial added value in GDP, the impact of technology spillover stock of intermediate goods is deemed minimal. This study explains the potential law of carbon emissions in five Central Asian countries and provides a scientific reference for Chinese technology export to five Central Asian countries.

Key words: carbon emissions, import trade, technology spillover, impact factors, the five Central Asian countries