Response to possible damage risk associated with climate change is the main task of emission control actions, which could effectively hedge against climate-related damage to some extent, while bring macro economic costs accordingly. Then, how is the economics of China's unilateral emission control actions, and what is the role of adaptation? These are urgent problems to be addressed, especially when the climate change situation becomes increasingly serious and global mitigation cooperation gets difficult to reach. Our cost-benefit analysis results based on energy-economy-environment integrated (3E-integrated) model reveal that China's unilateral emission controls contribute a little to constrain global temperature-rise, and the action cost is greatly larger than the avoided climate damage; besides, adaptation plays a formidable role in improving the economic feasibility of China's unilateral emission controls.