United States | News & Politics

That's a really dishonest framing of China's policies given that it's the one place in the world where wages are actually going up and poverty is being eliminated:

If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.

The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.

Labor in China is far from being cheapest in the world today, so your whole narrative here is based on a false premise.

What China had the willingness to do was to create a concrete plan to move off fossil fuels and then commit to implementing it long term.

Meanwhile, the relative difference is pretty significant:

For example, the USA has a value of 7.7% meaning its net import of CO2 is equivalent to 7.7% of its domestic emissions. This means emissions calculated on the basis of ‘consumption’ are 7.7% higher than their emissions based on production.

For example, China’s value of -14% means its net export of CO2 is equivalent to 14% of its domestic emissions. The consumption-based emissions of China are 14% lower than their production-based emissions.

And then we have to look at this in the context of per capita emissions which is even worse https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country=USA~CHN

The key part in all this is that China is transitioning off fossil fuels while US keeps talking about it, while having done little tangible work in this regard.