This paper empirically investigates the impact of economic growth and industrial structure on China's Nitrogen Oxides (NO_x) emissions reduction in a comprehensive Kaya-PLS framework. It is found that the influencing coefficients of economic growth and industrial structure are 0.27 and 2.53, respectively. It indicates that economic growth and industrial structure do bring positive effects on China's NO_x emissions, and industrial structure plays a much greater role than economic growth in the process of NO_x emissions reduction in China. Moreover, we incorporate additional variables involving energy consumption structure, energy intensity, population and cement production to augment the NO_x emissions function. In addition, six scenarios are set to calculate China's NO_x emissions for 2019–2030. The prediction results show that China's NO_x emissions decreased by 9.11% on average during 2019–2030 because of the decline of the proportion of secondary industry. It means that the decrease of proportion of secondary industry would make a significant decrease for China's NO_x emissions. What's more, China's NO_x emissions in six scenarios in 2020 are not more than 15.74 million tons, indicating that it is realistic to achieve China's reduction target on NO_x emissions according to the 13th Five-Year Plan. Therefore, the government should adjust the energy structure and industrial structure as soon as possible to control China's NO_x emissions and improve air quality.