Abstract: As a targeted financing channel for green and low-carbon projects, green bonds have developed rapidly around the world, but there are some different specific conditions for each country. However, the existing literature lacks an assessment and analysis of green bond development at the national level. This knowledge gap obstructs understanding the development trend of China's green bonds from a global perspective. So, it is crucial to comprehensively evaluate the global green bond development level and detect the determinants behind the differences among economies. In this paper, the green bond issuance record data of 60 countries or regions from 2014 to 2020 are collected to conduct comprehensive empirical research. With the application of the principal components analysis method, a systematic assessment of the green bond development in various countries is conducted firstly; then, some national clusters are obtained through the K-means cluster algorithm, which suggests some heterogeneities and homogeneities for different countries; To detect the rationales for the global differences in the development of green bonds, multiple linear regression, and ordinal Probit model are utilized sequentially. The empirical results show that the different economies display different levels and speeds in developing green bonds. Three categories of determinants could affect the development level of green bonds in a country, namely macroeconomic fundamentals, financial system, and low-carbon transition environment. Regarding specific determinants, the intensity of targeted green bond promotion policies is the most critical driving force for the development of green bonds. Some targeted policy recommendations are provided for China, in the field of capturing the development tendency of global green bonds, optimizing the development path of green bonds, and promoting green bonds to support the carbon-neutral actions. Additionally, this paper fills the current research blank in evaluating the development of green bond, whose conclusions can effectively support further exploration of this emerging domain.

Key words: green bonds, carbon neutral, green financial market development, policy support