China launched its national emissions trading system (ETS) in 2021, establishing the world’s largest carbon market by covered emissions. This overview traces the development of China’s national carbon market from pilot programs to the national scheme, summarizing key design choices including its rate-based cap, sectoral coverage, allowance allocation, monitoring, reporting and verification, and offset linkage. It also documents recent progress on auctioning, market stability mechanisms, sectoral expansion, and the renewed China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme. Drawing on policy documents and market data, the paper discusses the program’s contribution to China’s dual-carbon goals and the challenges and opportunities for its further development.