But the focus of the article is on China's air quality.

As for carbon emissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292

And even though China emits more carbon annually than the US today, the US and Europe are still ahead in cumulative emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-.... Cumulative emissions are the carbon that's already in our atmosphere and causing heating today. If you want to apportion "blame" for climate change, then the US is 25% responsible, Europe is 30% responsible, and China is 14% responsible as of 2023. And India is only 3.6% responsible.

China's high emissions today power a manufacturing industry that has made cheap decarbonization via solar and batteries a realistic prospect. That's a much better use of their current emissions compared to what the developed countries do with theirs.

China has a large population and does the dirty work of manufacturing for much of the rest of the entire world.

China has done more for renewable energy solutions than any other country, and their per capita population consumption patterns for personal are lower than many G20 countries.

In a fair representation of data, the total high carbon dioxide output from China should be assigned to source- the people across the globe with high personal consumption that have off shored their industry to China.