Will China's trade restructuring reduce CO2 emissions embodied in international exports?

China's CO2 emissions exports embodied in international trade has recently attracted more attention and raises questions on the liability and responsibility for environmental costs associated with Chinese produced goods. Given that embodied emissions exports and imports are normal phenomena during international trade, the key question focuses on China's reduction of embodied emissions exports via trade restructuring. A trade restructuring optimization model combined with input-output analysis and multi-objective programming was established in this study, in order to analyze the maximum volume of embodied emissions reduction within bearable cost constraints. The results suggest that the trade-off cost for China to reduce embodied emissions exports is very high. Additionally, the net exports of China's embodied CO2 emissions under a reasonable scenario can only be reduced by 3.26%. Previous policy suggestions on import-export structure adjustments have limited effects on the reduction of China's embodied emission exports, and unemployment is an important constraint on embodied CO2 emissions export reduction. Even so, China can still take advantage of various positive factors that have emerged in recent years to improve the industrial and energy consumption structures given that the increasing trend of China's embodied CO2 emission exports has already changed gradually. (c) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.