While it's not surprising that's in the top, it's surprising by how much. ~1/7th of the world population, but ~55% of coal consumption is pretty unbalanced IMO. Of course, the real reason why is that China is the world's factory so the energy consumption is huge as well.

I think the real takeaway here is that the world depends on the industrial production of China, which is powered by coal. We are all using that coal to buy cheap Chinese manufactured goods, and the sooner we come to terms with this the better. Whether a single country uses coal or not is irrelevant for tackling carbon emissions, if we're all basically exporting our carbon emissions to China.