The "dual carbon" goal puts China under tremendous pressure to reduce carbon emissions. Seeking a low-carbon transition has become a challenge for China. Revealing the decoupling relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions is a key breakthrough point for China to pursue the development of low-carbon economy. Based on the IPCC carbon accounting method and Tapio decoupling model, this paper explores the decoupling effect of China's economic growth and carbon emissions as well as the spatio-temporal characteristics, and decomposes the drivers of the decoupling effect of carbon emissions by using the IDA-PDA integrated analysis method. The results show that: ① From 2005 to 2019, the overall decoupling index of carbon emissions in China presented a fluctuating downward trend, mainly weak decoupling, and had a good decoupling status. ②The decoupling status of carbon emissions in the eastern and central regions of China was better, reaching strong decoupling in 2015-2019. The decoupling index of carbon emissions in the western region was significantly lower, although it was still in the weak decoupling stage. Besides, the decoupling status varied greatly among Chinese provinces, and the decoupling index of carbon emissions in general showed a distribution pattern of high in the northwest and low in the southeast. ③ For the contribution of drivers, factor substitution and technological progress are the key factors that promote the decoupling of China's carbon emissions, and economic level is the most important factor that inhibits the decoupling of China's carbon emissions. Energy structure, efficiency changes, and population size mainly show inhibitory effects on the decoupling of China's carbon emissions. ④ For the contribution of regions, from 2005 to 2010, the eastern region had the strongest inhibitory effect on China's carbon emissions decoupling. From 2010 to 2012, the inhibitory effect of eastern regions on China's carbon emission decoupling gradually decreased, and the inhibitory effect of western regions on China's carbon emission decoupling gradually increased. From 2012 to 2019, the roles of three major regions on China's carbon emission decoupling were unstable and changes considerably.