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Probably because while change over time is important, it's a trickier metric to cross compare.

For example, at the beginning of the century, their per capita emissions were low and also, nearly half of the population was in extreme poverty. So while we can balk at the tripling, it seems unfair since the competition was already high and mostly due to people living it up.

To say China is doing worse than the US because they went up while the US went down, well the per capita for US is still 50% higher than China in absolute terms. Now the UK can claim that in absolute and relative terms they are doing better.

Though even then you have some hiccups. UK emissions per capita are down and are really low compared to China numbers, fantastic. How much, however, is due to outsourcing the ecologically inconvenient manufacturing to nations like China? If the contribution of imports added to things, how does the picture shift?

On the flip side, the focus on per-capita in the name of fairness also unreasonably gives a pass to huge polluters in China. If a heavily polluting endeavor sets up shop in china, no big deal, they get to just divide their impact by 1.4 billion to not seem so bad, even if the portion of population pertinent to their stuff rounds to zero. So I wonder how much of that ecology impact is actually concentrated among a lot less rosy small population rather than just the consequence of improved quality of life for an average person in the nation.