That's a choice. No one is forcing their hand here. If it were the 90s I would have to agree with you, but, it isn't.
I assume that they're taking an approach of using renewable energy where possible and fossil fuels when that's not enough.
The chief problem is that they're not ramping up nuclear quickly enough, and it's hard to deploy in desert west of the country. And thanks to our persistent self-sabotage there's civil unrest related to these power plants.
The nuclear is to be used to ramp production of solar PV and batteries cleanly, then decommissioned. Timeframe would be 25 years.
Decommissioning of current old reactors is a problem already but there's really no alternative - ramping solar PV with standard energy sources would be bad. A lot of reactors are expected to shut down by 2025...
> But today
We're not talking about today, we're not just talking about the last ~50+ years. And moreover, even today they are pretty happy infringing on many other rights of their citizens.
That if they didn't their population would remain poor, and lacking access to healthcare, food, and water? And in an even worse situation when climate change finally hit? Are you suggesting that if China hadn't concentrated on development, the developed countries would be currently falling over themselves to fix the problem?