To tackle the problem of severe air pollution, China has implemented active clean air policies in recent years. We quantified China’s anthropogenic emissions during 2010–2017 and identified the major driving forces of these trends by using a combination of bottom-up emission inventory and index decomposition analysis (IDA) approaches. The major air pollutants have reduced their emissions by 17–62 % during 2010–2017. The IDA results suggest that emission control measures are the main drivers.