China’s carbon peaking policy intensity dataset across national, provincial, municipal to county-level over 2021 to 2025

Policy texts serve as the carriers of policy content and hold unique value in the research of policy differences, policy diffusion, and inter-governmental relations. Carbon peaking is a key strategic goal for China to address global climate change. The carbon peaking implementation plan provides a carrier for exploring China's carbon peaking path and actions. However, at present, there is relatively little research on the policy text of the carbon peaking implementation plan. In this study, for the first time, a systematic collection of publicly available carbon peaking implementation plans in China was conducted, and the policy intensity was quantified by applying a combination of natural language processing and machine learning methods. This dataset includes 316 national, provincial, municipal and county-level policies during the period from 2021 to 2025, and quantifies the policy intensity from the dimensions of three policy instruments: legal, market and supervision, as well as three policy targets: precise, general and vague. This dataset can help researchers further understand China's carbon peaking policy system and provide basic information for subsequent policy comparative studies and policy evaluations.