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As the world's largest carbon emitter, China is under great pressure to cut down carbon emissions. Understanding the evolution of carbon emissions across Chinese cities is important for policymakers when allocating carbon emission quota among these cities. This paper draws upon the Open-source Data Inventory for Anthropogenic CO2 to calculate city-level per capita carbon emissions in China from 2001 to 2016. Overall, we find that per capita carbon emissions of Chinese cities have been generally on the rise during the 2001–2016 period. However, there has been on average a modest decline in per capita carbon emissions of cities in China's Yangtze River Delta region and Pearl River Delta region from 2011 to 2016, after a remarkable increase during the 2001–2011 period. Besides, the average north-south gap has been enlarged, with northern cities having a relatively higher level of per capita carbon emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the economic costs of pollution due to sulphur dioxide emissions in China and their impacts on human health and ecosystems in Northeast Asia, specifically China and Japan. We compare actual emission charging as practiced in China with the estimated domestic and regional ‘optimal’ charges. The analysis demonstrates that, while the actual SO2 emission charge in China has been increased, it may be still less than the estimated domestic ‘optimal’ charge incorporating damage costs only on human health by dry deposition in a gaseous form, excluding damage costs caused by acid rain in China. Nevertheless, it would be still beneficial for Japan to financially assist China with its SO2 reduction because the percent contribution by northeast China to deposition in Japan is increasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]