December 2017 China announced, through the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) the program for the establishment of a national carbon emissions market (Energy Portal, 2017). The details of the emission trading scheme (ETS) are not made public yet. The ETS will start with the electricity sector covering around 3.5 Gt CO2 emissions (Stavins, 2017) and is expected to start in 2020 (China Carbon Forum, 2017). After that, gradually other industry sectors, such as cement, steel, petroleum refining and chemicals will be added to the program. The ETS targets is not an absolute emissions gap, but a rate based (CO2/Kwh) cap that is set per category per sector. The rate is based on historical trends and technology benchmarks (Stavins, 2017). For example, coal-fired power plants are expected to have different rates, than gas-fired power plants. In the beginning, the permits of this scheme will be grandfathered to the firms, in this case plants emitting more than 26,000 tonnes of CO2 per year (Carbon Brief, 2017).

Updates in 2024:
Expansion of sectors: China plans to include cement, steel, and electrolytic aluminium industries in its national carbon trading system, starting in 2024. This will increase the ETS coverage from 40% to about 60% of China's total CO2 emissions.
New technical standards: Guidelines for accounting and reporting greenhouse gas emissions in the cement industry were released, aiming to improve data accuracy and comparability.
Integration of voluntary mechanisms: China is coordinating its Renewable Energy Green Power Certificate system with the Voluntary Emission Reduction Market to prevent double-claiming of benefits and enhance overall market efficiency.