This is a study on China’s green port performance incorporating the Delphi, AHP and IPA methods. The ‘green port’ concept has been gaining significant attention worldwide. Diverse approaches have been made increasingly from both the green practices of the port industry and a wide range of studies from academicians. Accordingly, a great many ports, regional and international organizations have made various guidelines for green port performance, while the emphases on green performance have changed over time as well. As a country with the biggest number of top ports in terms of container volume, it is of great significance for China to do a thorough and effective green performance both for the global environment and Chinese government’s green goal incorporated in the national “Five-year-plan”. However, China has never been considered to be a “role model” for a green port performance due to the lack of a set of clear and practical criteria for a green port performance and the limited range of its green practices. Given the fact that China has a special and unique port management system, it is very necessary to create applicable green performance indicators for Chinese ports and to indicate the priorities of China’s green port performances. Since no port could possibly have unlimited resources for green performance, a great many ports have started to seek a sustainable development with high efficiency. The green practices of global ports were reviewed for practical references and a great many previous studies made both domestic and abroad were examined as well for a theoretical framework. This study attempts to create a set of applicable and practical green port performance indicators and prioritize the green indicators to see each port’s performance level. Also, this study indicates each port’s green port performance efficiency as well. Shanghai Port, Qingdao Port and Ningbo Port were selected as the targeted ports for their geographic location, top level of container volume and their strategic position in future developments. This study, therefore, constructed an expert panel for three rounds of Delphi surveys and eventually extracted a set of green criteria for Chinese port performance. Based on the results of the Delphi, all green indicators were prioritized on three levels, i.e. the global level of all green dimensions, the local level of all sub-criteria under each dimension and all green sub-criteria overall levels. On each level the relative weights were estimated from two aspects i.e. the overall level and by port. In the end, with the important degree of perception obtained from the 3rd round Delphi and the performance level from the results of AHP, the relative degree of importance perception and performance level were measured to indicate the green port performance’s efficiency. The Delphi results clearly show that the green performance in Chinese ports has great consistency with government’s major policies, i.e. focuses on the CO2 emissions and energy saving, which is highly consistent with and greatly resulted from the port management system in China. This study, furthermore, found that in the AHP, firstly, green port performance in China is not quite as community-concerned and motivated as other global ports such as Rotterdam Port, Sydney Port, etc. Secondly, in China, a port’s geographic location and type of hinterland economy significantly influences a port’s priority regarding its port performance. Thirdly, two types of focuses were clearly observed in Chinese ports’ green performances, i.e. government’s policies and indicators could be easily seen, heard or felt, such as noise control, dust control and energy-saving criteria. The overall IPA result shows that the ports’ green performances in China are staying at a relatively low efficiency since the indicators falling in the quadrant with a high degree of perception and low degree of performance are consequently much more than the quadrant with possible over performance. As regards to each port’s green efficiency, Shanghai Port has the best performance efficiency compared to the other two; while Qingdao Port has the most indicators requiring immediate improvement and resource reallocation. Based on the set of green indices extracted from this study and the priorities of green port performance estimated by the AHP, implications could be drawn on two aspects: both the policy maker and the port authorities, for more effective and efficient policies. Firstly, the central government and local governments should be completely aware of the features of the green performance in China, and that they are strongly national policy-oriented and cost-saving oriented. In the future policy making process, the government should take sufficient consideration to guiding the ports to be more global market-oriented and community-concerned motivated. Secondly, the government could launch a clear and official green port evaluation system based on the criteria extracted from the reliable Delphi surveys made by experts from diverse affiliations. With the clear evaluation system, the government would be able to annually rank the ports in China to practically motivate the ports for better green performances. With the clear and applicable green port evaluating indicators, the port authorities would be able to make concessional rate policies and penalty policies for their “green” suppliers and customers, which is exactly what other global ports are doing. Furthermore, based on the IPA results, port authorities could possibly reallocate some of their resources in the fields where the indicators require immediate and vast improvement. Instead of only “taking orders”, port authorities should proactively participate in further international collaboration and at the same time, still be more competitive. This study greatly contributes to a set of green indices for Chinese ports based on three rounds of expert surveys targeted on three representative ports. It is of relative significance to keep the green evaluation indicators upgraded and tracking on the green port performance, which requires sufficient time and labor, wide social connections and tremendous funding. It would be extremely difficult for scholars to conduct this kind of large scale country wide project. Hopefully, this study will call for interest from the research institutes and/or the government for further in-depth studies not only on upgrading the green port performance indicators but also prioritizing the performance criteria to reveal the focuses and the green performance efficiency on the overall level.