Abstract: The industrial competitiveness index is established on the perspective of revenue and cost. The impact of upgrading in industrial competitiveness on carbon productivity is analyzed theoretically and tested with the panel data of 36 industrial from 2003 to 2015. The study found that, upgrading in industrial competitiveness can increase carbon productivity effectively, low carbon technology efficiency had a prominent effect on the improvement of carbon productivity, but excessively high proportion of coal consumption restrain carbon productivity. The results of robustness test show that, for industries with higher nationalization and lower level of environmental regulation, the role of competitiveness in promoting carbon productivity is more pronounced than in the reference group. Finally, some suggestions on improving carbon productivity are proposed, including improving the level of industrial competitiveness, improving the efficiency of low carbon technology and optimizing the structure of energy consumption.