This article develops an analytical framework for examining China’s energy policy-making processes, and uses it to explain the recent shifts in the country’s energy priorities. The authors analyze the decisive factors in China’s energy sector reforms by looking at the different stages from agenda setting, through policy choices, to decision making and implementation. The article attempts to identify the actors behind, the drivers for, and the constraints to, the progress of energy sector reforms in China since 1993 and to follow the evolution of these drivers and constraints. This will allow a better understanding of the possible future trends of energy sector reform, the institutional limits to policy change and the constraints to implementation.