A great challenge China's power sector faces is to mitigate its carbon emissions whilst satisfying the ever-increasing power demand. Optimal planning of the power sector with consideration of carbon mitigation for a long-term future remains a complex task, involving many technical alternatives and an infinite number of possible plants installations, retrofitting, and decommissioning over the planning horizon. Previously the authors built a multi-period optimization model for the planning of China's power sector during 2010-2050. Based on that model, this paper executed calculations on the optimal pathways of China's power sector with two typical decision-making modes, which are based on full-information" and "limited-information" hypothesis, and analyzed the impacts on the optimal planning results by two typical types of carbon tax policies including a "continuous and stable" one and a "loose first and tight later" one. The results showed that making carbon tax policy for long-term future, and improving the continuity and stability in policy execution can effectively help reduce the accumulated total carbon emissions, and also the cost for carbon mitigation of the power sector. The conclusion of this study is of great significance for the policy makers to make carbon mitigation policies in China and other countries as well. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.