Sustainable Developmental Evaluation of Foreign Trade Based on Emergy Analysis Method in Shenzhen City, China

Yutong Tian, Shulian Xue, Chunhui Li, Hongli Liang and Jiansu Mao
Additional contact information
Yutong Tian: Key Lab of Water and Sediment Science of the Ministry of Education, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Shulian Xue: School of Economics and Management, China Petroleum University, Beijing 102249, China
Chunhui Li: Key Lab of Water and Sediment Science of the Ministry of Education, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Hongli Liang: Sponge City Engineering and Technology Center of Henan Province, Zhengzhou 450000, China
Jiansu Mao: Key Lab of Water and Sediment Science of the Ministry of Education, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-17

Abstract: The foreign trade sustainable development index system of Shenzhen City, including the three subsystems of environment, economy, and society, was constructed based on the theory of emergy analysis. The sustainable development of foreign trade in Shenzhen City from 2009 to 2016 was evaluated, and a detailed analysis of changes in the emergy of light and heavy industries was performed. The results showed that the scale of economy has been expanding, and the total volume of imports and exports has turned from a rise to a decline in 2013. The status of sustainable development is not optimistic. The transaction volume of energy is reduced, and the quality of people’s living environment is declining. The sustainable development of Shenzhen City is not perfect, but it is in a phase of gradual optimization. Moreover, the proportion of heavy industry in import and export trade is significantly higher than that of light industry, which has caused the outflow of energy to a certain extent. Therefore, to improve the level of foreign trade sustainable development, the efficiency of resource utilization must be improved. The import of energy products must be increased, the ability to cope with external interference must be strengthened, and the foreign trade industrial structure must be adjusted.

Keywords: emergy analysis; foreign trade; sustainable development; Shenzhen City (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/11/3035/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/11/3035/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:11:p:3035-:d:235227

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().