Weakened growth of cropland‐N2O emissions in China associated with nationwide policy interventions

China has experienced rapid agricultural development over recent decades, accompanied by increased fertilizer consumption in croplands; yet, the trend and drivers of the associated nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions remain uncertain. The primary sources of this uncertainty are the coarse spatial variation of activity data and the incomplete model representation of N2O emissions in response to agricultural management. Here, we provide new data‐driven estimates of cropland‐N2O emissions across China in 1990–2014, compiled using a global cropland‐N2O flux observation dataset, nationwide survey‐based reconstruction of N‐fertilization and irrigation, and an updated nonlinear model. In addition, we have evaluated the drivers behind changing cropland‐N2O patterns using an index decomposition analysis approach. We find that China's annual cropland‐N2O emissions increased on average by 11.2 Gg N/year2 (p