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Humans have altered the earth in unprecedented ways, and these changes have profound implications for global climate change. However, the impacts of human pressures on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions over long time scales have not yet been clarified. Here, we used the human footprint index (HF), which estimates the ecological footprint of humans in a given location, to explore the impacts of human pressures on CO₂ emissions in China from 2000 to 2017. Human pressures (+13.6%) and CO₂ emissions (+198.3%) in China are still on the rise during 2000–2017 and are unevenly distributed spatially. There was a significant positive correlation between human pressures and CO₂ emissions in China, and northern China is the main driver of this correlation. The increase of CO₂ emissions in China slowed down after 2011. Although human pressures on the environment are increasing, high-quality development measures have already had noticeable effects on CO₂ emission reductions.