Governing Decarbonisation Through Policy Experimentation: Layered Site Selection in China's Low‐Carbon Pilot Programme

ABSTRACT Policy piloting is central to China's experimentalist approach to environmental governance. Pilot programmes often expand through multiple rounds, but the extant literature explores them as a whole, with how site selection criteria change during expansion underexamined. We conceptualise multi‐round policy piloting as a dynamic process in which testing error is layered onto testing correctness as a programme expands. Testing correctness favours sites that are able to demonstrate feasibility, whereas testing error broadens selection to settings that can reveal the limits of policy applicability. We examine China's Low‐Carbon Province and City (LCPC) pilot, the country's first large‐scale national decarbonisation experiment. Using Cox proportional hazards and piecewise constant exponential models, we analyse city‐level entry into pilot coverage across successive batches. Baseline comparisons show greater fiscal capacity among pilot cities in all batches. Regression results show that favourable implementation conditions are associated with pilot entry in the initial stage and remain relevant during expansion. Later‐round entry is associated with proximity to national benchmarks in energy intensity and industrial structure, suggesting that representativeness also informs selection of pilot sites during expansion. These findings shed light on the promise and the limits of policy experimentation in China's low‐carbon transition.