China’s Changing Role in the Plastic Waste trade

Abstract

Globalization has strengthened the international contact between countries. Capital, labor, goods and service are free to move in order to maximize profit. China’s economy grows significantly and international status rise fast since Reform and Opening Up policy. Globalization brought China with many opportunities and challenges. Based on the previous studies, analyse is made about impacts of globalization on China. Globalization on the one hand leads to great success in China’s economy, but on the other hand, making China’s environment under great pressure. Some scholars for example Hui and Zhao (2017) think “Pollution haven” hypothesis is valid in China. Labor and pollution intensive companies are moved from countries with tough environmental policy to those with looser policy. Besides, with the aim of protecting their own waste, developed countries have waste trade between developing countries. Decades ago, China was a country lack of raw materials and there was an urgent need for economy development, China accepted waste trade and pollution intensive companies but at the cost of environment degradation. However, in the long term, environmental cost has many negative impacts on China. Recently, China changed its waste import policy and it is no more the biggest plastic waste importer in the world. After China banned plastic import, both China and developed countries need to find a balance solution between economy and environment to have a moderate economy growth and healthy earth.