HONG KONG — China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluter, pledged on Tuesday to wean its economy away from reliance on fossil fuels as it grows, and to try to bring the rise in its carbon emissions to an earlier end.

The Chinese government offered the goals as building blocks for a new international agreement on countering global warming, which governments hope to reach at a conference in Paris late this year.

How quickly and how much China’s emissions will grow is crucial to the arithmetic of global climate change, which is driven by rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide. China’s motor vehicles, factories, power plants and boilers released 29 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2013 — twice the amount released by the United States, the world’s largest economy and second-largest carbon polluter.

The proposals “reflect China’s biggest effort to respond to climate change, and embody its thoroughgoing participation in global governance,” Prime Minister Li Keqiang of China said on Tuesday in Paris, according to the Chinese government’s website. He described the proposals in a meeting with President François Hollande of France, whose government will host the international conference.