Assisted Thinking: The Western media’s relentless greenwashing of China’s coal addiction.

January 20, 2026

It is a firm, objective, and undeniable statement of fact that China’s economy is powered by coal. According to the latest data available from the Statistical Review of World Energy, coal accounted for 58% of the country’s primary energy consumption in 2024. A distant second was oil at 20%, with natural gas rounding out the podium at 10%. Simple arithmetic dictates that nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind, and other renewables split the remaining 12%.

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