It is deceptive to compare coal % of power generation, because China specifically substitutes coal for gas because they have none of that (and no reliable source). This also means those coal plants run at lower/decreasing utilization because a big part of their role is to provide dispatchability. So for China you have 55% coal and 3% gas while the US uses 16% coal and 40% gas for electrical power.

If you compare numbers, you will also find that lower per-capita consumption more than compensates for currently still higher CO2 intensity of chinese electricity (3000kWh/person * 0.5kgCo2/kWh for China vs 5500kWh/person * 0.35kgCo2/kWh, i.e. 1.5 vs 1.9 tons of Co2/year/person from electricity for China vs the US).

New coal power installations != increased use of coal for power generation. You have to stop this lie by omission.

Their new coal plants either replace older ones. Or they are left idle. Close to 90% of all their generation growth comes from solar and wind.

They use coal because they have coal. Just like the US uses natural gas and then pats itself on the back for "reducing emissions" by switching from coal to gas. But their current trajectory will see them going to burning very little coal. It's a national security issue for them.

I'd guess that this is in large part due to the sheer amount of datacenters they plan to bring online in the coming years and the fact that they can't scale up green energy quickly enough to meet the expected demand.

In an ideal world I think they'd prefer to be powered by 100% clean energy but not at the cost of losing the AI race.

China's coal consumption has been pretty much flat for the past decade. That's certainly not ideal, but it's not a rapid increase.