I think it's partially innacurate to compare per capita energy consumption for the two nations.

The average American lives a vastly different lifestyle to someone in china, consider that per capita consumption of China is now higher than that of the EU. It's not the whole picture. An average American uses almost four times as much energy as a Chinese or European person at home.

If you're talking about standard of living, sure, per capita makes sense. There's no argument that for the majority of people in the US their standard of living is probably objectively higher.

However, China's industrial electricity usage per capita has overtaken that of the US long ago.