From local production to global consumption: Assessing the carbon footprints of Chinese cities in global value chains

As cities take on increasingly specialized roles in global value chains (GVCs), the spatial disconnect between where emissions occur and where responsibility lies continues to widen. However, city-level carbon flows across GVCs remain largely underexamined, hindering the design of effective climate policies. Here, we develop a GVC-oriented carbon accounting framework by nesting a multiregional input–output (MRIO) model of 313 Chinese cities within a global MRIO system. We quantify the upstream and downstream carbon footprints of Chinese cities via GVCs and assess their economic gains from GVC integration. Our analysis reveals a strong concentration of foreign demand–driven emissions (FDEs) in major coastal hubs, with the top 10 cities accounting for 25% of national FDE. In these cities, up to 43% of FDE stems from intermediate goods trade. Carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product from international trade were 1.5 times higher than those solely relying on domestic industrial chains. In 54 service- and high-tech-oriented cities, over 20% of emissions occurred outside their borders and were induced by international supply chains (foreign GVC segment), with the United States being the largest contributor. At the national level, the United States alone accounted for 43.7% of emissions embodied in Chinese 313 cities’ gross exports. Our framework may inform more equitable allocation of responsibilities to develop collaborative decarbonization strategies across cities.