As the world’s largest carbon emission emitter, China is confronted with double pressure of meeting the huge international emission reduction needs and its domestic sustainable development needs. Under this background, a big challenge is how to maintain rapid economic development while actively respond to climate change as well as to achieve energy-saving and emission-reduction targets. To find the effective ways, an important premise is to recognize the driving forces of carbon emissions growth and identify their contributions and differences.Using the six eastern coastal provinces as an example, this paper first analyzes the provincial carbon emission growth and their driving factors using the extended Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) model. Then the six provinces are classified into three stages of development of low carbon by cluster analysis, and the similarities and differences in their emission driving forces are discussed. Taking a step further, the paper also analyzes, from the population structure perspective, if and how rural to urban migration and west to east migration contribute to per capita GHG emissions at various regions in the process of urbanization by using panel data models.The results show that the economic growth and energy efficiency are the promoting and inhibiting factors of emissions growth, respectively. Different low-carbon development stages show different degrees of contribution of the driving forces. There is no significant influence from either the economic or energy structure change, indicating great emission reduction potential from structure de-carbonization especially when compared to advanced nations. Among two population related phenomena, the effect of population density on per capita emissions growth becomes the leading role, and its elastic coefficient with respect to per capita GHG emissions changes from positive to negative with economic development.Urbanization rate effect on per capita GHG emissions is not statistically significant. Suggestions for more effective and easy policy making to implement low-carbon emission reduction are finally provided.