Environmental technology import and carbon emissions intensity convergence: Analysis for the Belt and Road Initiative countries

Since the official launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, China and the BRI countries have been working for the implementation of certain environmental measures to make the BRI project green and clean. For this purpose, China and the BRI countries have planned to implement certain environmental measures. Although China can efficiently implement these measures, most of the BRI countries face technological deficiencies and lack of proper environmental plannings. To tackle these deficiencies, the BRI countries can import environmental technology from China. Moreover, they can communicate their environmental protection policies with China for better policy guidance. The current study, therefore, aims to examine whether the BRI countries' import of environmental technology from China can reduce carbon emissions in these countries. Moreover, it also examines that whether these countries should follow the environmental policy and the import policy of China or they should follow the six European countries (EU-6) with minimum carbon emissions intensity. This study considers a sample of 88 selected BRI countries (BRI-88) for the period 2001-2019. The results obtained with beta convergence (based on the panel quantile regression model) suggest that not all the BRI countries but only the BRI countries with relatively higher carbon emissions intensity can significantly reduce their average carbon emissions intensity by importing environmental technology from China. Moreover, BRI countries can follow the environmental policy of China which is more feasible for them. However, regarding the environmental goods import policy, BRI countries can follow both China and the EU-6.

Automated summary

Since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, China has been working with the BRI countries to implement environmental measures for a green and clean project. This study examines whether importing environmental technology from China can reduce carbon emissions in the BRI countries and whether they should follow China's environmental and import policies or the EU-6 countries. The results suggest that only the BRI countries with higher carbon emissions intensity can significantly reduce their emissions by importing technology from China.