China's is still a developing economy and they have a lot of ways to increase productivity compared to the US. They are also at a leading edge in many technologies of the future so they do not need to spend as much as other developing countries to purchase them from abroad.
China's growth rate may slow down but it will continue to be faster than the US rate for many years.
US Dollar is the world's reserve currency. If US dollar becomes less strong in the future, the size of US economy may not be as large in relative term anymore. The petrodollar system may not be as powerful when renewables are more important. Perhaps China also considers this when they push so hard for renewables.
That's not in fact true any more. China's coal consumption peaked in 2013, and has been falling for 3-4 years.
The very first hit on Google for "Chinese" "Coal" "Consumption" is a January 2017 article from the World Resources Institute whose title reads, “China’s Decline in Coal Consumption Drives Global Slowdown in Emissions”
http://www.wri.org/blog/2017/01/china%E2%80%99s-decline-coal...
2014 to 2015, the US added roughly $650b to its economy, China added $580b. 2015 to 2016, the US added $530b, China added $140 billion (due to the dollar's return to being strong).
And if we're talking coal, China is the king of coal. They have no plans what-so-ever to do away with it any time soon. They're not reducing their use of coal, in fact they're expanding their coal use, while simultaneously adding a lot of renewable energy. Meanwhile the US has reduced its coal use by about 1/3 in a decade. This chart says it all:
https://i.imgur.com/hcPeoAB.png
> having schizophrenic and increasingly more bully-like foreign policies
Uh, you mean like using military aggression to annex a massive area of six other nation's territories in the South China Sea? Or did you mean the constant military threat to use force to invade and annex the independent nation of Taiwan?
When was the last time the US annexed territory like that or the last time official US policy was to annex another nation when a convenient opportunity presents? Imagine, tomorrow the US decides to annex all of Mexico's gulf water territory, and then some more territory in the Caribbean Sea from six or seven other nations. The next day, the US declares that Toronto and Vancouver belong to the US, and that it has the right to invade at any time to force that outcome. That would be almost equivalent to what China is doing right now.