China is the largest emitter of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the world. Because of their negative influences on human health, the characteristics and potential driving forces of PAH emissions should be evaluated to establish effective mitigation strategies for different economic sectors. This study is the first to quantify the embodied and enabled PAH emissions of 108 sectors in China in 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017. The results show that the total sectoral emissions increased by 92% (from 28.0 to 53.7 kt) from 2002 to 2012 and decreased to 53.0 kt in 2017. The eight aggregated sectors had different characteristics according to their production-, consumption-, and income-based emissions. Both the embodied and enabled emission flows increased (from 13.8 to 29.2 kt and from 11.3 to 20.5 kt, respectively) with time. The influences of the major final demands and primary inputs reversed from increasing to decreasing emissions over time. In particular, the primary input structure had a stronger impact on decreasing emissions than the final demand structure. The results revealed that different mitigation policies should be applied to different sectors and that adjusting primary input behaviors might be a relatively efficient method to reduce PAH emissions.