The evolution of China's electricity market-oriented reform: Pathways to achieving marketization and decarbonization...

China's electricity sector faces dual challenges of administrative monopoly and high carbon emissions. Market-oriented reform is a key solution to address both. This paper develops a multi-path dynamic framework for institutional change to examine how China's Electricity Market Reform (CEMR) has advanced marketization and decarbonization under climate constraints. We find that the evolutionary pathway of CEMR follows dynamic gradual mode: "drift" from planned system, "counter-productive layering" of market instruments, "conversion" from planned to market logic, and "consistent layering" of decarbonization goal and market tools. Furthermore, strategic behavior, as the endogenous driver of evolution, is influenced by actor preferences and power distribution, with weak self-adjustment requiring continued state intervention. The high-level institutional context, as an exogenous factor, has shifted from a "decisive driver" to a "directional guide", with its influence marked by "delayed maturity". The chain interaction between exogenous forces, major shocks and contextual shifts, and endogenous feedback accelerate the exposure of existing conflicts among stakeholders or trigger new ones, thereby driving evolution. Under their drive, the further evolutionary path will involve consistent layering of reliability goal and new capacity, grid incentive mechanisms, or conversion from pure market to incentive-constraint regulated market logic.