China Dual-Credit

Mechanism

MIIT's dual-credit regulation runs two parallel accounts for each passenger-vehicle maker above the 30,000-unit threshold.

• Corporate Average Fuel Consumption (CAFC) credits: a maker whose fleet beats its fuel-consumption target earns positive CAFC credits; missing it generates negative credits.
• New Energy Vehicle (NEV) credits: each battery-electric, plug-in hybrid, or fuel-cell vehicle earns NEV credits, summed against a mandatory NEV credit ratio applied to the maker's conventional-vehicle output.

Negative CAFC credits may be offset by banked CAFC credits, by transfers from affiliated firms, or by purchasing surplus NEV credits. NEV credits are tradable on MIIT's credit-trading platform; surplus CAFC credits cannot be sold, only banked or transferred within a group. Offsetting flows one way: NEV credits can cover a CAFC deficit, not the reverse.

Ratio ramp

• 2021: 14%; 2022: 16%; 2023: 18%
• 2024: 28%
• 2025: 38%
• 2026: 48% (finalized November 2025)
• 2027: 58%

The November 2025 amendment also cut the per-unit credit values for BEVs and PHEVs by roughly half and lowered the low-fuel-consumption-vehicle multiplier to 0.1, so a given NEV volume now yields fewer credits and the effective compliance burden is steeper than the headline ratios suggest.

Market and hiring relevance

The scheme is the principal lever forcing legacy combustion makers in China to electrify or buy credits, sustaining a multi-billion-yuan credit market. Demand concentrates in compliance accounting, powertrain electrification engineering, and credit-trading analyst roles inside automakers and their joint ventures.