As the world's factory, China has enjoyed huge economic benefits from international export but also suffered severe environmental consequences. Most studies investigating unequal environmental exchange associated with trade took China as a homogeneous entity ignoring considerable inequality and outsourcing of pollution within China. This paper traces the regional mismatch of export-induced economic benefits and environmental costs along national supply chains by using the latest multiregional input-output model and emission inventory for 2012. The results indicate that approximately 56% of the national GDP induced by exports has been received by developed coastal regions, while about 72% of air pollution embodied in national exports, measured as aggregated atmospheric pollutant equivalents (APE), has been mainly incurred by less developed central and western regions. For each yuan of export-induced GDP, developed regions only incurred 0.4-0.6 g APE emissions, whereas less developed regions from western or central China had to suffer 4-8 times the amount of emissions. This is due to poorer regions providing lower value added and higher emission-intensive inputs and having lower environmental standards and less efficient technologies. Our results may pave a way to mitigate the unequal relationship between developed and less developed regions from the perspective of environment-economy nexus.

Department of Environmental Studies Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

Department of Geographical Sciences University of Maryland College Park Maryland 20742 United States

Institutes of Science and Development Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190 China

School of Government Central University of Finance and Economics Beijing 100081 China

School of Public Policy and Management University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100049 China

State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Environmental Planning and Policy Simulation Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning Beijing 100012 China

State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse School of the Environment Nanjing University Nanjing 210023 China

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