'Made in China' goods harming environment: study

Washington: 'Made in China' goods may cost you less but they are associated with significantly higher carbon dioxide emissions than the same products made elsewhere, potentially accelerating climate change, a new study has claimed.

"The amazing increase in Chinese manufacturing over the past 15 years has driven the world economy to new heights and supplied consumers in developed countries with tremendous quantities of lower-cost goods," said study co-author Steven J Davis, an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine in US.

"But all of this has come at substantial cost to the environment," Davis said. The researchers, also from Harvard University and the University of Maryland, attribute China's high emissions intensity - the quantity of carbon dioxide emitted per dollar of goods produced - to the nation's antiquated manufacturing processes and reliance on coal.

"The carbon dioxide emissions related to China's exports are large not just because they export a lot of stuff or because they specialise in energy-demanding industries, but because their manufacturing technologies are less advanced and they rely primarily on coal for energy," said co-author Klaus Hubacek, a professor at the University of Maryland.

In an earlier study, Davis showed that developed countries were outsourcing both jobs and the problem of industrial pollution by having products manufactured in low-wage economies like China's.

This new work goes a step further to demonstrate that consumption of Chinese-made goods by consumers in advanced economies is potentially accelerating global climate change, a problem without national borders. For this study, researchers paid particular attention to Chinese regions with high emissions intensity.

Steel mills, mineral processors and petrochemical plants in Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Yunnan and Shanxi are China's dirtiest industries, researchers said. Davis and his colleagues suggest that developed countries could do a lot to alleviate carbon pollution by helping improve manufacturing processes in these areas.

"This analysis can help policymakers in China and internationally identify the industries and provinces in which efforts to promote less energy-intensive manufacturing equipment and practices would have the largest leverage to reduce carbon dioxide emissions," said lead author Zhu Liu, a research associate at Harvard University.

"Given the differences we observed within industries and across provinces in China, many opportunities would involve creating incentives to promote the adoption of Chinese best practices," said Liu, who is also postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology. The study was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.