On a per capita basis it still emits about half as much as the United States.

This is still high, and China's per capita emissions have only gone up over time so far. It currently emits about as much per person as the EU does. This is too much, and both China and Europe need to reduce their emissions by a lot. Every year that they don't is more damage done.

Also, China’s emissions figures are misleading since it has an enormous surplus in trade of manufactured goods.

Consumption-based emissions paints a slightly better picture of China, but only slightly. It is still 90% of the EU's per capita emissions on this metric.

And just generally, what on Earth is that last full paragraph? "If China almost doubles the number of cars it sells, and it subsidises all of them by this number that appears to have been plucked from nowhere, and then it also subsidises batteries and solar panels by the same amount, well that makes a really big number that America isn't doing nearly as much as!"

The WP article is not some anti-China screed; it is openly discussing China's very real opportunity to lead the way for the world here. It brings up a lot of the progress that China has made and its enormous success in manufacturing the things needed for cleaner power. That it also brings up some of the challenges China faces in doing so hardly seems "bizarre" to me. Right now China is doing no better than Europe, and the fact that they're both better than America will help exactly none of us.