Study on the Impact of National Value Chain Embeddings on the Embodied Carbon Emissions of Chinese Provinces

Accelerating the construction and optimization of national value chains is of great significance to reducing both pollution and carbon emissions and promoting green economic growth. In accordance with the input–output table and carbon emission statistics of China in 2012, 2015, and 2017, in this paper, we use the total trade decomposition method and the value chain decomposition method to decompose the embodied carbon emissions and the embeddedness of national value chains. Subsequently, we empirically study, for the first time, the impact of the degree of domestic value chain embedding on implicit carbon emissions using the calculated results. The results show the following: (1) The top three provinces with embodied carbon emissions are Shandong, Hebei, and Jiangsu, while the top four industries are the production and supply of electricity and heat; metal smelting and rolling processing; non-metallic mineral products; and transportation, warehousing, and postal services. (2) The degree of forward and backward national value chain embeddedness in Chinese provinces has increased, and the degree of forward embeddedness in most provinces and industries is lower than that of backward embeddedness. (3) The embeddedness of domestic value chains and embodied carbon emissions is always negatively correlated, and this conclusion is still valid after robustness and endogeneity tests. (4) There is industrial heterogeneity in the impact of the degree of embeddedness of domestic value chains on embodied carbon emissions.