Since the reform and opening up, China's export trade has maintained a rapid growth; meanwhile, China's energy consumption has been increasing sharply. "High export and high energy consumption" has become the feature of China's trade and economic development. In this paper, based on the input-output analysis approach, the authors have conducted an empirical study on the export trade and energy consumption of 21 trade industrial sectors. The results show that, China is a big net exporter of embodied energy. Assuming that the export growth rate of embodied energy maintains to be about 23.6%, the average annual growth rate of the past 32 years, and based on the input-output data of 2005, by 2030 China's net export of embodied energy would be over eight times more than the aggregate energy production, which is obviously infeasible. As a country of very low per capita en- ergy, China must change its export pattern, encourage or restrain the export of different industrial sectors according to their energy consumption intensity, and promote structural change of energy- efficient exported products, so as to achieve the sustainable development. Accordingly, the authors put forward some suggestions.
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