Unveiling Seven-decade Disparities of Methane Emissions Across China

China's century-long transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy generated substantial methane emissions, yet the trajectory and drivers of this evolution remain poorly quantified. Applying IPCC guidelines, national statistics, and localized accounting parameters, we construct a comprehensive subnational methane emission inventory for mainland China, with the unit of Tg CH4 per year. This inventory allows for the evaluation of trends from 1949-2022, categorized by eight major source sectors: 1) rice cultivation, 2) livestock, 3) biomass and biofuel burning, 4) coal exploitation, 5) oil and natural gas (NG) systems, 6) fossil fuel consumption, 7) landfills, and 8) wastewater. This dataset includes the emissions, multiple drivers to provincial disparities, and validation datasets.