This paper employs the global Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index to measure and decompose green productivity growth for three major urban agglomerations in China over the period 2003-2013. As the first study known to focus on the green productivity of emerging cities in developing countries, the results show that technical progress, rather than efficiency "improvements, is the main contributor to green productivity growth. Using the criterion of eco-friendliness, we categorize the cities into 'green' and 'yellow' city groups and identify 10 green innovators for the sample cities. The analysis also discusses the determinants of the drivers of green productivity growth and provides some useful policy implications. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.