Ya and they have 1.2 billion people they are bringing out of poverty while becoming the manufacturing hub of the world. They do realize they need massive amounts of power to keep up the growth. They also realize pollution is a huge problem and that they can't continue to burn coal supplies at their current rate forever.

>and their growth has declined to below 5% this year.

So they're still growing, then.

And presumably southern China is still tropical and in desperate need of air conditioning in summer. In fact it's getting worse due to climate change.

They also need heat in the winter. I’ve never been so cold in my life actually, people really take indoor heating for granted.

Because rural or urban, once people have access to enough energy to rise out of grinding poverty, they tend not to want to return to a precarious, labor-intensive subsistence lifestyle.

Especially when their individual share of the resulting pollution is small compared to the degree to which it’s improved their lives.

“Declined” growth of 5% this year still means that things there are 5% bigger than they were last year.

Are you suggesting they’re polluting for the hell of it?

1.2 billion and falling. For not the change in standard of living pushes consumption net positive, but I wonder about in 20 years or 30?

They're within a tenth of a percent of peak population. It might fall a meaningful amount over time, it might not.

Someone is lying.

Either the coal capacity is flat (as the main article of the thread suggests), or the coal-fired emissions are still rising (aka they are still bringing coal-fired capacity online).

It wouldn't be the first communist regime that is lying though.

Or someone can't read. No where in article does it state Coal capacity is flat, just coal growth has flattened significantly per 14th five-year plan (2021-2025). PRC peak coal is expected this or next year, and phase down / decline starting 15th five-year plan (2026-2030).

Check again the graph.

Coal segment from 2023 to Jun24 is not flat.

https://i.imgur.com/Gfm8g2m.png

It looks flat because that's what adding 8GW to ~1200GW looks like. Adding only 8GW coal is one point article remarks as noteworthy, and the data comports.