Tourism is emerging as an important contributor sector to carbon emissions. As inbound tourism is the main component of tourism activities, measuring and evaluating the carbon footprint of inbound tourism can help achieve low-carbon development of the global tourism industry. Based on the carbon footprint theory, this study describes the distribution and transfer path of China’s inbound tourism carbon footprint by using the China multi regional input-output model embedded in the inbound tourism satellite account. The results reveal that embodied carbon emissions (ECE) of inbound tourism is higher than direct carbon emissions, and carbon emissions intensity is close to the average economic. Therefore, it is difficult for inbound tourism to achieve the dual goals of stimulating economic growth and emission mitigation. The ECE of inbound tourism has obvious inter-provincial transfer characteristics. Inner Mongolia and Guangdong are the largest provinces with net outflows/inflows of ECE, with net outflows of 1.47 million tons and inflows of 2.66 million tons. Besides, the ECE mainly flows from the northeast and northwest regions to the southern and eastern regions. From the perspective of industry transfer, 72.2% of ECE of inbound tourism comes from the power sector.

China and G7 countries contribute 70% global GDP and 55% global carbon emissions. The carbon leakage between China and G7 is a crucial issue in achieving the synergetic emission abatement globally. The motivation of this study is to evaluate the embodied carbon transfer between China and G7 in the trade between 2000 and 2014, and investigate the driving factors that impact the embodied carbon trend. A multiregional input–output (MRIO) model based on the WIOD database is constructed, and a structural decomposition analysis (SDA) is employed. The results indicate that China plays the role of net exporter of embodied carbon in trade with G7, which mainly flows to the US (5825.67 Mt), Japan (3170.36 Mt) and Germany (1409.93 Mt). However, China’s embodied carbon exports to the G7 show an inverted U-shaped trend with a turning point after financial crisis, while the G7’s embodied carbon exports to China continue to rise. The conclusion is that to achieve the climate goal of carbon neutrality, it is not enough to rely solely on the low-carbon transition on the production side, the demand side should also be adjusted.

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