China leads the world in both renewable energy usage AND coal use. And by a lot.

They also have some of the most people (is India ahead nowadays? I can't keep track), and they manufacture tons of things meant for export to other (including western) countries.

The point being, everybody is greenwashing. China is greenwashing their energy mix. Western countries greenwash their own energy by essentially outsourcing the production and thus pollution. And this isn't about China really. I could say the same for a bunch of countries.

The small consolation is that beside all the green propaganda, some progress is at least being made. Probably not enough, but some.

True but we should also realize that China didn’t just sit around one day and go “let’s set up a bunch of coal fired power plants and steel mills for funsies.”

Most western countries that have run the neoliberalism playbook have gone “let’s let China build shit, we will do service, finance, and knowledge work instead” but we still want manufactured goods. I just think it’s important to bring this context when people point to China’s coal use as if they are just burning it for fun. They are burning it because we wanted cheaper goods and if we hadn’t have offshored that industry to them we’d be burning it.

We pay them to burn the coal and then complain that China is a polluter.