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The agricultural sector is extremely vulnerable to climate change and also plays a very important role in the operation of the entire economic system, leading many studies to evaluate the possible agricultural direct economic damage (ADED) of climate change. However, this damage may have an amplification impact through the intricate industrial linkages that exist among sectors, and this impact may be even greater than the original damage. Therefore, to elucidate the economic cascading effect (ECE) in China caused by ADED and industrial linkage, this paper used the ARIO model to evaluate the total ECE and analyse the differences in the 19 sectors by taking the ADED under future annual mean temperature (AMT) increases of 1–5 °C as the input condition and adjusting the exogenous parameters to enhance the adaptability of the model; the goal was to assess the economic impact of climate change in China. The results show that (i) there is a significant amplifying impact of ECE due to industrial linkage under the influence of warming, ECE will be 4.24–5.25 times that of ADED, and the total economic impact (ADED + ECE) will exceed the GDP of the Chinese capital of Beijing in 2012 when the AMT increases by 1.5 °C, while it will exceed one tenth of China’s GDP when it increases by 4 °C. (ii) Manufacturing will be the sector most affected by the industrial linkage under ADED, which accounts for 26.58% of total ECE, followed by agriculture (10.39%) and construction (8.5%). (iii) The decrease in cultivated land area will have a significant impact on the economy; when it is reduced to the minimum demand (1.41% less than 2012), ADED increases by 1.65 times and ECE increases by 2.35 times. This paper aims to provide a new perspective from which to evaluate the economic impact of climate change by studying ECEs behind sectoral interactions.

The rapid growth of energy-intensive and high-emission industries has underpinned China’s economic boom over the past few decades. Since her economic development entered the new normal phase in 2013, China has faced the challenge of mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while achieving medium-high economic growth. Transforming the economic development pattern and restructuring the economy is a principal solution, and one important prerequisite is discerning great sectoral disparities of GHG emissions and corresponding environmental costs because the diversity of characteristics among different sectors causes the pollutants that are discharged to vary. Hence, this paper aims to assess the environmental costs of China’s total and sectoral GHG emissions. Based on the System of Environmental and Economic Accounts and using the economic input-output life cycle assessment model, this study calculates the green GDP and green output value of 27 sectors to reflect the environmental costs of GHG emissions in China during 1991–2016. The findings are as follows: (1) while China’s direct GHG emissions increased from 3,040.60 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2eq) to 10,641.10 MtCO2eq during 1991–2014, declining trends were observed in the total and 16 sectors’ direct GHG emissions in the subsequent two years; (2) although the ratios of direct GHG emissions to total GHG emissions in most sectors decreased, total GHG emissions in eight sectors rose first and then fell, and in 15 sectors continued to rise; (3) China’s green GDP grew from 2,003.88 billion Chinese Yuan to 26,245.25 billion Chinese Yuan during 1991–2016, and the difference between China’s GDP and green GDP decreased from 2.73% to 1.02%; and (4) differences between the output value and green output value decreased in over 20 sectors. Finally, some policy implications are given from the perspective of some key sectors of the Manufacturing industry, Agricultural sector, and Transport, storage, and post sector.