Trade impacts of China's Belt and Road Initiative: From resource and environmental perspectives

China's 'Belt and Road Initiative' (BRI) is a major global initiative with severe implications for economies, policies and societies; yet its impacts on environment and natural resource use have received little attention. This paper fills such a gap by assessing environmental and resource impacts of China's international trade with those BRI countries after the start of the BRI in 2013. Despite potential concerns on problem shifting, we find that China's net export growth after the BRI is concentrated in pollution-intensive and resource-intensive industries, compared to what would happen otherwise, and therefore increases China's domestic environmental and resource burden. This alleviates the concern over a migration of pollution and resource exploitation from China to other BRI countries and provides valuable insights to the Chinese policy makers. Several policy recommendations are raised in order to improve the overall sustainability of China's BRI.