China has released a new carbon accounting system that revises its own emissions data while increasing the estimated contribution of the United States. This model shifts the focus from industrial outputs to the consumption of products.

China has launched what it calls the world’s first “panoramic” carbon accounting system, a model that revises down the country’s emissions compared to other estimates and raises them for the United States. Unlike other models that assign responsibility for emissions based on total carbon output from facilities such as power plants and factories, the new model gives greater weight to the consumers of products. Developed by the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of...