Trade Benefits and Environmental Costs of GVCS: A Case Study of the BRICS

As the international trading system has developed with the division of Global value Chains (GVCS), the export trade of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) has grown rapidly. The resulting growth of carbon emissions has drawn wide attention from the international community, necessitating the comparison of the trade benefits and environmental costs of the BRICS participation in GVCS. Based on the Eora database, this paper constructs a decomposition framework for the calculation of export value-added and embodied carbon, based on a multi-region input-output (MRIO) model. The trade benefits and environmental costs paid by the BRICS’ total exports from 1990 to 2015 were measured and the imbalance was analyzed, along with the causes. The results show that the main value-added and carbon embodied in the BRICS’ exports originate from their own countries, and the domestic value-added content of the BRICS’ exports decreased while the foreign value-added content increased.

ROK, China Strive for Mutual Economic and Trade Benefits

The President of the Republic of Korea (ROK) Roh Moo-hyun announced that Ko- rea fully recognized China’s market economy status. Roh’s announcement was made during a joint press conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao. who was on a state visit to ROK in November. China is now the largest trading part- ner of ROK, with trade volume between the two countries expected to reach 100 billion US dollars this year. The two leaders agreed that the bilat- eral trade volume should be doubled to 200 billion US dollars by 2012. A significant milestone having been reached between the two countries, what kind of impact can be expected to follow from the events in regards to the bilateral economic and trade relations between China and ROK? With such questions in mind. China’s Foreign Trade reporters in- terviewed Kim Ha-joong. Ambassador of ROK to China.

Free Trade Benefits

The 6th China-ASEAN(Association of Southeast Asian Nations)Expo(CAEXPO)was held in Nanning,Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region,on October 20-24.What influence has the CAEXPO brought to Guangxi? The China-ASEAN Free Trade Area(FTA)will begin on January 1,2010.What opportunities and challenges will it bring to the development in the region? Guo Shengkun,Party Secretary of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Committee,answered these questions in an interview with the Guangming Daily newspaper.

A study of benef its compensation mechanism for agricultural water rights trading under the restriction of ecological reconstruction:a case study of Shiyang River basin

Agricultural water allocation system based on priority rights has caused regional conflicts and downstream ecological degradation. It is the urgent need to introduce the concept of the initial water rights and establish benefits compensation mechanism to resolve such problems. This paper takes the Shiyang River basin as an example to calculate the opportunity cost of 0.97×10^8 m^3 of agricultural water encroached by the middle reach based on initial water right allocation system under which water is allocated in accordance with the ratio between agricultural population of two different regions concerning the downstream ecological reconstruction needs with Bio-economic model （BEM）. The results suggest that the total economic loss of Minqin County for ecological reconstruction amounts to 2.5 7×10^8 yuan, of which 1.68×10^8 yuan is ecological compensation, representing the economic loss Minqin suffered for ecological reconstruction which shouM burden beneficial groups of ecological reconstruction and 0.89 ×10^8 yuan is the economic loss Minqin suffered due to Liangzhou＇s encroachment behavior which should be compensated by Liangzhou.