Exergy analysis of natural resources embodied in China's interregional trade and its implication for regional imbalance.

Large-scaled interregional trade is based upon massive exchanges of natural resources, leading to more environmental emissions and economic imbalance. China is the largest trade country in the world and has to face such challenges since different Chinese provinces are in different development stages with different resource endowments. By using the latest multi-regional input-output (MRIO) tables and exergy accounting, this study aims to investigate natural resources and added values embodied in interregional trade in China for years of 2012, 2015, and 2017. Regional environmental inequality (REI) index and logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) were applied to measure the imbalance states and uncover corresponding driving factors. Results show that the total trade volumes in the middle Yellow River and eastern coastal regions were generally higher than those in other regions, together accounting for 41.50 ~ 41.78% of the total trade volume during the study period. The major flows of embodied natural resources shifted from the middle Yellow River region to western coastal, eastern coastal, and southern coastal regions. The northern coastal and eastern coastal regions were the major exporters of embodied added value. Less developed regions had higher REI values, indicating more environmental and economic losses than developed regions. Natural resources intensity was the major impact factor on the trade imbalances in most provinces. This study provides valuable insights for alleviating trade imbalance and promoting sustainable natural resources management based on cross-regional collaboration.