Chinese Electric Vehicle Policy Database: A Dataset of Policy Goals, Instruments, and Supply Chain Stages

Sci Data. 2026 Jul 1. doi: 10.1038/s41597-026-07708-z. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

China's electric vehicle sector has expanded rapidly, with policies playing a central role. Yet empirical resources that capture the comprehensive evolution of China's EV policies remain fragmented. We present a database of 7,300 policy documents issued by national, provincial, and municipal bodies from the early 2000s to 2023. Each record is annotated with issuing agency, level, date, policy goals, instrument type, targeted supply-chain stage, and policy scope (EV-specific or policies that indirectly shape the EV supply chain). The resource advances four fronts: (i) broad coverage including indirect measures; (ii) balanced central-local representation; (iii) theory-informed classifications of goals, instruments, and targets; and (iv) a whole-of-supply-chain perspective. Technical validation combines rule-based filters, model-assisted coding, and manual checks. We obtain rule-based accuracies of 100% for EV-specific identification and 94.1% for supply-chain labeling, alongside LLM-based accuracies of 96.5% for instrument classification and 82.9% for goal coding. This dataset enables analyses of policy design, sequencing, and diffusion across levels of government, providing an important foundation for comparative research on industrial policy and clean-technology transitions.

PMID:42386786 | DOI:10.1038/s41597-026-07708-z