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https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants
Between 2000 and now their coal plant capacity factor dropped from 70% to around 50%.
Most likely they're building all those plants because that contributes to the GDP figure.
China has shut down thousands of small, old, relatively inefficant coal plants while at the same time building fewer, larger, more efficient, less polluting coal plants and while doing more than any other country to advance solar and related technologies.
They have a massive population, which they worked hard (in questionable ways) to keep in check, as the associated energy demand has grown they've worked hard to meet it with the technology they had (coal) while also working to make that cleaner and working to replace it as rapidly as possible.
> Between 2000 and now their coal plant capacity factor dropped from 70% to around 50%.
I'm unsure of your specifics here, I agree they're working hard to use less, FWiW though, the most recent IEA figure for China coal use was 60.6% of total energy supply in 2021
https://www.iea.org/countries/China/coal
The IEA also asserts that globally we've reached "peak coal use" planet wide, despite the apparent foot dragging of China and India who are still bound by large populations, large energy demands, production energy usage for goods for much of the reast of the planet, and the difficulty of fast transition.
To replace that coal generated electricity it would take 5,417,484 GWh of electricity from non coal sources.
The coal used to generate that electricity needs replaced, but it is also double-counted in the primary energy (not electricity) supply number.
I'm suggesting it's pointless because the coal plants are already uneconomic, and this rule is only impacting things in 8 years.
Developing nations might want to import cheap coal because richer nations no longer want to poison their children and want their fish to be edible during pregnancy and reason that they don't have that luxury yet.
But when America, Australia etc. are all trying to sell them exported coal because they are running cheaper solar at home, they might see another option.
Either way, we get gramps...