Why does China ?s carbon intensity decline and India ?s carbon intensity rise? a decomposition analysis on the sectors

As more attention paid to global warming, the international community argues that developing countries should take more carbon reduction responsibility. China and India, the top two developing countries confronted heavy pressure to handle the dilemma of "environmental protection or economic increase". In this context, we switched focus to carbon intensity (defined as carbon emission per unit of economic output) to investigate carbon performance and economic performance simultaneously. In this study, we fully considered the impact of sector heterogeneity on carbon intensity, that is, we decomposed the carbon intensity of the 56 industries, which subsequently reclassified into 18 industries in China and India using the data from WIOD (world-input-output database). The results indicate that: (1) India's carbon intensity presented a constant increasing trend, while China appeared a stable decreasing trend, and the former exceeded the latter since 2009; (2) all industries of China exerted efforts to decrease carbon intensity, conversely, India only had a few industries decreasing carbon intensity; (3) energy intensity significantly decreased China's carbon intensity, while increased India's carbon intensity surprisingly; (4) in general, structure effect made negative contribution to carbon intensity improvement in China, while positive in India. Specifically, economic structure had a positive impact on China and India, though the impact was minor for the former, significant for the latter; energy structure slightly promoted Indias carbon intensity to decrease, on the contrary, it was the largest inhibitor to China. This research will not only promote low-carbon economy development of China and India, but also provide scientific and practical references to other developing countries.