Abstract: This paper measures the embodied SO2 of China foreign trade, the industrial distribution of embodied SO2 and the trade flows among the main trade partners by using the method of multi-country input-output table model, based on the data of 2002, 2005, 2007 non-competitive input-output tables from China, foreign input-output tables from OECD and foreign pollution emission intensity from GTAP version 7.0. Moreover, by using the structural decomposition analysis, the paper explains reasons of the increase of embodied SO2 of export trade and contribution rate of the three factors. The results show that: in the period of 2002 to 2007, China foreign trade not only had a large trade surplus, but also brought about great surplus of embodied SO2. The rapid increasing size of China export trade was the main reason for the increase of the embodied SO2 of China export trade. However, due to the strict environment protect policy and the advance of energy saving technology, the decline of the intensity of emission has played an import role in inhibiting the increase of embodied SO2 in export trade.

Key words: Embodied SO2 , Foreign Trade, SO2 Emissions Intensity, Embodied Pollutant Index