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• Constructing a new welfare function considering economy, equity and ecology. • Optimizing carbon emission pathways from multiple perspectives. • Focusing on the emission pathways in China achieving the ambitious targets. With the increasing climate warming, reducing carbon emissions has gradually become a consensus around the world. However, the process of carbon emission reduction will inevitably lead to the transformation of economic structure, industrial structure and energy structure, which will bring huge changes in economic output, employment and other aspects, thus affecting the overall social welfare and equity. Therefore, it is particularly important for each country to determine a scientific and effective carbon emission pathway which take into account both social development and climate targets. As the largest carbon emitter, China has put forward the targets of carbon peak and carbon neutrality. In this regard, the corresponding carbon emission reduction scenarios are designed according to the new situation of China's emission reduction in this paper, firstly. Furthermore, under the premise of maximizing social welfare, an optimization model which integrating economic growth-equity-environment is developed to determine China's emission pathways under different scenarios from 2020 to 2050. Besides quantitatively showing the future total amount and peak value of carbon emissions under different scenarios, the results can also identify its evolution pathway over time. Therein, the peak under most scenarios will concentrate in 2025–2030, which is about 10.7 to 11.8 billion tons. With the increasingly stringent constraints on carbon emission reduction, the cost of emission reduction will increase correspondingly, but the overall social welfare will increase slightly. Finally, our findings provide practical guidance on achieving carbon emission reduction and enlightenments on policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]