| Summary: | The Chinese economy has been recovering slowly from the global financial crisis, but it cannot achieve the same rapid development of the pre-recession period. Instead, the country has entered a new phase of economic development—a ‘new normal’. We use a structural decomposition analysis and environmental input–output analysis to estimate the determinants of China’s carbon emission changes during 2005–2012. China’s imports are linked to a global multi-regional input–output model based on the Global Trade and Analysis Project database to calculate the embodied CO _2 emissions in imports. We find that the global financial crisis has affected the drivers of China’s carbon emission growth. From 2007 to 2010, the CO _2 emissions induced by China’s exports dropped, whereas emissions induced by capital formation grew rapidly. In the ‘new normal’, the strongest factors that offset CO _2 emissions have shifted from efficiency gains to structural upgrading. Efficiency was the strongest factor offsetting China’s CO _2 emissions before 2010 but drove a 1.4% increase in emissions in the period 2010–2012. By contrast, production structure and consumption patterns caused a 2.6% and 1.3% decrease, respectively, in China’s carbon emissions from 2010 to 2012. In addition, China tends to shift gradually from an investment to a consumption-driven economy. The proportion of CO _2 emissions induced by consumption had a declining trend before 2010 but grew from 28.6%–29.1% during 2010–2012.
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