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With the gradual increase of international willingness to reach the carbon peak and carbon neutrality, this paper decomposes the influencing factors of China's carbon emission changes from 2008 to 2019 using the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index model (LMDI), and analyzes the contribution amount and rate of each influencing factor. The results found that: for the whole country, the cumulative growth of carbon emissions during the study period is about 416,484.47 (104 tons), among which the economic growth effect plays a major role in promoting, with a cumulative contribution rate of 284.16%; The increase in regulation intensity and the optimization of industrial structure, however, suppress carbon emissions well, with a cumulative contribution rate of about – 199.21% and − 64.75%, respectively, during the study period. For economic regions, the cumulative influence direction of each driver is the same as that of the whole country, while the population size effect in the northeast economic region and the regulation input effect in the eastern coastal economic region act in the opposite direction from other economic regions, and the carbon emission reduction direction of the energy intensity effect varies from one economic region to another. Accordingly, this paper proposes policy recommendations to enhance regulatory intensity, optimize industrial and energy consumption structure, implement localized emission reduction strategies, and promote synergistic emission reduction in economic zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has emerged as one of the most important environmental issues worldwide. As the world's biggest developing country, China is participating in combating climate change by promoting a low carbon economy within the context of global warming. This paper summarizes the pathways of China's low carbon economy including the aspects of energy, industry, low carbon cities, circular economy and low carbon technology, afforestation and carbon sink, the carbon emission trading market and carbon emission reduction targets. There are many achievements in the implementation of low carbon policies. For example, carbon emission intensity has been reduced drastically along with the optimizing of energy and industry structure and a nationwide carbon trading market for electricity industry has been established. However, some problems remain, such as the weakness of public participation, the ineffectiveness of unified policies for certain regions and the absence of long-term planning for low carbon cities development. Therefore, we propose some policy recommendations for the future low carbon economy development in China. Firstly, comprehensive and long-term planning should be involved in all the low carbon economy pathways. Secondly, to coordinate the relationship between central and local governments and narrow the gap between poor and rich regions, different strategies of carbon emission performance assessment should be applied for different regions. Thirdly, enterprises should cooperate with scientific research institutions to explored low carbon technologies. Finally, relevant institutions should be regulated to realize comprehensive low carbon transition through reasonable and feasible low carbon pathways in China. These policy recommendations will provide new perspectives for China's future low carbon economy development and guide practices for combating climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]