China just changed how it counts carbon dioxide, and more than 700 million metric tons of CO2 per year disappeared from its ledger. That is equivalent to the entire annual emissions of Germany or South Korea, gone through bookkeeping shenanigans rather than any actual emissions reductions. Under this convenient accounting, China could meet its 2030 commitments even if absolute emissions increase.
This is not the first time that China has rewritten its climate targets to match its frenetic pace of development. The U.S. shouldn’t hamper its economy by chasing goals that its largest competitor simply fabricates its compliance with.
China tracks its climate goals through “carbon intensity,” or the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP. A new analysis shows that, under previous official data, emissions rose 14% from 2020 to 2024, but China now says that emissions only rose 7% from 2020 to 2025. China has never publicly defined how it measures carbon intensity, so researchers had to reverse-engineer the change from GDP data and estimates of oil, gas, and coal consumption.
China now seems to be excluding non-energy uses of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal consumed as chemical feedstocks, which are the raw materials for plastics and other chemicals, while folding in industrial process emissions from sectors like cement that happen to be declining because of China’s property bust. China was on track to badly miss its five-year carbon-intensity target, but after the revision, it nearly met it.
This is the second time in two years that Beijing has pulled this move. China tracks two key climate metrics: “energy intensity,” or how much energy the economy uses per unit of GDP, and “carbon intensity,” or how much CO2 it emits per unit of GDP. In 2024, Beijing redefined energy intensity so that renewables, like wind and solar, and fossil fuels used as raw materials no longer counted, but kept the same bar to meet.
It’s the same playbook being applied to the carbon intensity metric. Fall behind the target, redefine what counts, declare the target met.
The fossil fuel use that China has excluded from carbon metrics powers the country’s strategic industrial base. China’s coal-to-chemicals sector has nearly 500 million tonnes of annual production capacity, with 75 new projects planned across 15 provinces. China’s fossil-fueled industrial sector has helped it dominate 70% of the market for 19 of 20 critical minerals.
China has no qualms about burning coal for energy, either. Chinese data center power demand is growing at 19% annually and will more than double by 2030. Those facilities draw primarily from the eastern part of China, where 70% of electricity comes from coal. In 2025, China commissioned 78 GW of new coal-fired capacity, the most since 2016. That is enough to power between 39 and 58 million U.S. households.
The Trump administration withdrew from the Paris Agreement and has moved to prioritize affordable, reliable electricity over costly regulations. But the legacy of decades of climate-driven permitting, litigation, and rulemaking still hampers American energy development, and the political pressure to rejoin Paris and reimpose those costs will return. When it does, remember that China’s “commitments” are only worth whatever Beijing decides after the fact.