Abstract: To systematically clarify the mechanisms through which green mine construction promotes carbon emission reduction and to identify its implementation pathways, this study addresses the current research gap whereby existing studies have largely focused on green mining technologies, evaluation standards, and ecological restoration, while providing relatively limited systematic discussion of the roles of policy, market, and technological drivers and their links with whole-process carbon mitigation. Taking green mine construction in China as the research context, this study first reviews its development process, policy framework, standard system, and major achievements. It then conducts a keyword co-occurrence analysis of relevant literature published in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database from 2000 to 2025, together with a review of policy documents and a synthesis of representative engineering cases, to examine the major drivers, operational mechanisms, and implementation pathways of carbon emission reduction in green mines. The results show that green mine construction in China has gradually shifted from pilot exploration toward institutionalized, standardized, and routine implementation, accompanied by the continued improvement of multi-level coordination and dynamic supervision mechanisms. Nevertheless, the low-carbon transition is still constrained by the weak transformation capacity of small and medium-sized mines, regional disparities, an incomplete life-cycle carbon accounting system, and insufficient differentiation of emission-reduction pathways. Carbon emission reduction in green mines is mainly influenced by three categories of drivers: policy regulation, market mechanisms, and technological innovation. Policy regulation provides the institutional foundation through standards, ecological restoration responsibilities, and incentive policies; market mechanisms strengthen firms’ willingness to reduce emissions through cost optimization, green finance, and the realization of carbon asset value; and technological innovation provides technical support by improving resource-use efficiency, optimizing the energy structure, and strengthening intelligent management. These drivers further operate across the entire mine life cycle and give rise to three major implementation pathways: green mining, ecological restoration, and intelligent management. Green mining reduces energy consumption and carbon emissions during resource development and production through scientific planning, source reduction, and process optimization. Ecological restoration restores and enhances carbon-sink functions through geological carbon sequestration, vegetation recovery, soil improvement, and industry-restoration integration. Intelligent management improves energy-use efficiency and carbon-emission control throughout the production process through digital monitoring, intelligent production, and clean transportation. Overall, the coordinated effects of policy, market, and technological factors can support the establishment of a whole-process low-carbon governance framework characterized by “carbon control at the source-carbon reduction during production-carbon-sink enhancement at the end stage.” Future research should further improve mine carbon accounting and green mine evaluation standards, quantitatively identify the contributions and interactions of different drivers across mine types, regions, and mining methods, and promote the integration of low-carbon technologies, long-term carbon-sink monitoring, and digital carbon management. These efforts can provide theoretical support and practical guidance for the green transformation of the mining sector and life-cycle carbon mitigation under China’s carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals.