How can China limit its reliance on coal?

South Korea used a combination of LNG and nuclear energy for its energy expansion. Perhaps China can also include renewables as well. For such a large country having such a huge energy demand, they will need a lot of everything...

Reliance on coal may not be the issue. Seems that most alternatives for energy generation price themselves out of any realistic long-term use scenario. China can mine its own coal at a fraction of the cost and therefore may be fairly hard to unseat as the fuel of choice. The real issue is: should the IEA pressure them to adopt new technologies that are proven to reduce emissions from coal burning?

If China adopts more pollution controls on coal (including gasification) that would increase the price of power from coal and perhaps allow some alternatives into the mix. Certainly the size and scale of the Chinese economy presents a special challenge to controlling carbon and other greenhouse gases.

The first thing you need to do is convince the CCP that man-made global warming is a real issue.

Second thing you need to do is provide alternatives. And they aren't exactly obvious (nuclear = perhaps, but what about the waste/risk and uranium supply isn't unlimited either, Gas = that's a lot of LNG for such a big country!, Hydro = great but already maximised?, solar/wind = tiny, Biomass = perhaps, energy efficiency = perhaps the most promising of all, fusion = I guess we can't wait another 50 years).

My guess is the answer can only be some combination of all of the above but the more you achieve in convincing the CCP that they have a vested interest in limiting global warming, the more progress will be made on all of the other potential solutions. The USA's lack of leadership here doesn't help the cause.

In the near future we also may have to rely on coal.
So now is the time to investigate and invest in clean coal technology.
By using the new technologies the shortcomings will become apparent and new improvements can be developed.

It is hard to try to stop a country to use energy if the energy consumption pro capita is far less then for instance the energy consumption of the Americans.
The cry to stop the latter should be harder.