FYI. China is to the world's coal consumption what the US plus all of Europe are to the world's oil consumption. In 2007 China is projecting a total consumption of 2.5 billion tons of coal this year. That's over forty percent of the world's consumption. On the other hand on a per-capita basis that's still less than the US which is using roughly 40% of the coal with less than a quarter of  China's population.

China chokes on a coal fired boom