Since the low-carbon economy (LCE) was, firstly, brought out by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in UK in 2003, the issues related to the concept of low carbon (LC) have attracted more and more attentions at home and abroad. The low-carbon development (LCD) is one of the hottest issues in the academic circles. However, people remain to have some controversial viewpoints on this topic of LCD up to now. For example, some people think the LCD should guarantee the growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but some others think the LCD could leave it out. Therefore, in this paper, the two concepts of LCE and LCD were, at the first step, distinguished based on some published literature. Then, according to the distinguished result above, the indicators' system for evaluating the LCD levels of different regions was constructed, which contains 5 second-layer's indicators and 10 third-layer's indicators. As the unavailability of data, some provinces were omitted, and there were 30 provinces altogether were taken into the numerical case. In the empirical research process, a two-step methodology of combining the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) with the Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method is proposed. The FAHP was, firstly, used to compute the indicators' weights of the 30 provinces' LCD levels, and then the TOPSIS method used these weights as its own input weights to complete the whole calculation process. The results show that: (1) the index system is a very practical and effective evaluation tool. It can successfully help people to evaluate the LCD level of a region. (2) The integrated FAHP-TOPSIS method can effectively deal with the fuzziness, which was coming from the process of expert's assessment, because the fuzzy number' set was drawn into it. The results acquired are reasonable and consistent with the reality, which further prove the reliability of the method itself. (3) From 2003 to 2008, the LCD level of Shanghai has a slightly decreasing change. The percentage of the decline is 1.91%. All the rest 29 provinces have the increasing trend. Among them, Zhejiang has the largest growth, and Beijing has the least growth. The increasing percentages of the two regions are 29.73% and 0.38%, respectively. (4) Overall, the top 10 provinces of the LCD level in 2003 are still in the top 10 positions in 2008. Among the ten, Beijing has always had the highest LCD level relatively, while Liaoning and Jiangxi have kept at the 6th and 10th positions, respectively, but the rankings of the other seven provinces are changed from 2003 to 2008. However, the LCD levels of Ningxia, Qinghai, Gansu, Guizhou and Henan have been successively in the reciprocal five positions, and their rankings are unchanged. Finally, the rationality and uncertainty of the results by using the FAHP-TOPSIS method were analyzed. Some feasible directions for future studies are put forward, and some preferable policy suggestions to improve the provincial LCD level were proposed. These advices contain: strengthen the transformation of energy-saving technology; increase the proportion of renewable-energy consumption; accelerate the construction of the new urbanization and the compact city; implement the system of carbon emissions' total amount control, quota allocation and trading; extend an existing reforestation program, and so on.