China is still installing much more new coal power capacity then is decommissioning old coal power capacity.
Also the average age of Chinese coal power plants is much lower then the average age of US coal power plants. These new Chinese coal power plants could be used for decades.
What you said does not technically contradict what I said.
You have to decide what it is that you wish to measure.
I do not pay attention to "decommissioning", because a binary on/off switch is an arbitrary threshold.
If China reduced the output of every coal plant to 1%, they would be "decommissioning" nothing, and yet it would be fair to say that they've abandoned coal almost completely.
That's why it's a better metric to look at change in net coal usage (which is flat or going down in China last year), which factors in non-binary underutilization of old coal plants, as new coal and renewables come online.
Stats on wikipedia [1] stopped breaking out coal from other fossil fuel ('thermal') production in 2021.
But coal was 4.1 million GWh in 2014 and 5.0 million GWh in 2021; that's a lot of (relatively) new coal. Fossil fuel growth since 2023 is a lot less than earlier years, so maybe they have hit saturation for fossil fuel generation. I would expect high fossil fuel prices so far this year would drive usage lower, the stats for 2026 should be interesting.
Also the average age of Chinese coal power plants is much lower then the average age of US coal power plants. These new Chinese coal power plants could be used for decades.
Last available data from 2025.
https://www.statista.com/chart/36007/power-capacity-of-new-d...
https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-t...