It's not so much the per capita part here what matter but the fact that it looks at consumption. It doesn't matter if it pollutes more from production if the consumption of such production ends up being exported.
They have the #1 because the default sorting is CO2 Emissions (tons, 2016), when you change it to CO2 Emissions per capita (tons) it gets pretty low on the list but the number doesn't seem to be affected, which is bad for visualization honestly.
Because this does not list net emission but rather consumption per capita, it does not make sense to blame China for producing, since basically what happened is that the West outsourced its industrial sector to China, but the consumption of the Chinese production happens outside. So even though the US outsourced it to China, they are still the biggest polluters by consumption per capita.
Well, I mean they got together to fight against the Japanese imperialists, maybe it wasn't for too long, but that means quite a lot too. Also China's policy of non interventionism means kind of the same since they "make a truce" with the local bourgeoisie of exploited countries, since it is not the same with their own Chinese national bourgeoisie whom they exploit.
Lol, you took the time to transcribe it and translate and you are analyzing a decade years old quote as if it were relevant 100% today, you are not a clown, you are the entire fucking circus.
Fair, I was doing some Spanish reasoning on the Italian text.