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Introduction
With the acceleration of industrialization, the carbon emissions generated by human activities have been continuously increasing, causing serious impacts on the global climate system (Nordhaus, 2019). The Global Climate Status 2023 report (The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released on March 19, 2024) indicates that the global near-surface average temperature in 2023 is 1.45 ± 0.12 °C higher than the average value from 1850 to 1900, making it the hottest year in the 174-year observational record. Climate events such as rising sea levels, ocean heatwaves, and melting ice caps, caused by global warming, further encroach upon human living space, urging countries to actively seek more energy-efficient, low-carbon, and green development models (Hansen et al., 2012; Zeng et al., 2024). As the world’s largest developing country and the largest emitter of carbon (Yang et al., 2021), China’s attitude towards carbon emissions is of great significance to global environmental governance. China attaches great importance to environmental issues and actively promotes economic structural transformation through various means, achieving simultaneous economic efficiency and green development. China’s attitude and determination towards carbon reduction lay the foundation for the construction of the carbon reduction framework.
Since the 21st century, China has begun to explore new ways to combine market and regulation. Through the establishment of a sound environmental protection legal system, China has gradually increased the attention of enterprises to environmental protection and has made great achievements. Since 2013, Beijing and other provinces and cities have carried out pilot carbon markets and gradually expanded the coverage of carbon markets. Up to now, a nationwide carbon market system framework has been initially established. However, it must be admitted that compared to carbon markets in regions such as the EU, New Zealand, and California (USA), China’s national carbon market does face issues such as its late establishment, immature development, and imperfect trading systems. Transitioning from pilot local carbon markets to a national carbon market will encounter new problems. Blindly including emission control entities in the carbon trading scope not only increases government governance pressure but also hinders the long-term growth of enterprises. While regional carbon market pilots have achieved limited success, controversies surrounding carbon markets persist (Bushnell et al., 2013), particularly in areas such as employment (Liu et al., 2017) and technological innovation (Weber and Neuhoff,...