Carbon emission allowance has been a new form of right for development in support of human sustainable well-being in the post-Paris Agreement era. This brings the subject of allocation into focus. China,the world's largest carbon emitter,is facing the challenge of reducing its carbon emissions. This paper aims to help Chinese central government implement its ambitious emission reduction targets towards 2030 by allocating China' s carbon emission allowance to the provincial quotas. In order to do so,we propose four criteria for the allocation,namely fairness,efficiency,feasibility and sustainability. Then,a set of indicators from the social,economic and environmental pillars of sustainable development are selected,and a model that allocates China's carbon emission allowance to the provincial quotas is constructed according to the common but differentiated responsibility principle. The results show that between 20162030 Guangdong,Shandong and Jiangsu would have the largest carbon emission quotas,while Tibet,Xinjiang and Qinghai would have the smallest ones. Compared with the current province-wide carbon emissions in the 31 provinces,nine provinces such as Shanxi will run a significant deficit in terms of carbon emission space,16 provinces such as Hainan will run a surplus,and the remaining provinces will be close to the break-even point. In view of the differing emission reduction tasks and pressures confronted by individual provinces,place-specific differentiated policies for carbon emissions control would be the key to achieving China's 2030 target.