Along with its high-speed urbanization process, China has begun to initiate various policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since the end of the 1990s. Different from the extant studies most of which focus on how to make specific policies towards low-carbon city, this article, based on archival analysis on government documents and field interviews across ten cities, provides a systematic review on China's current low-carbon city policies. With a framework borrowed from public policy, this article decomposes the low-carbon city policies into three elements: goal, contents, and instruments, and focus on the three sectors — manufacturing, transportation and building which contribute to the largest share of GHG emissions in China. The sectoral policy contents and instruments for low-carbon cities in both urbanized and urbanizing areas are further analyzed. It finds that, despite problems in implementation, China has largely formed a multi-layer and multi-actor policy-making process for developing low-carbon cities, in which civil society should play a larger role in the future.