Regarding China's pollution levels, while it is true that averaging the pollution produced by the total population results in a relatively small per capita level, when you weight the data, to account for the inconsistent urbanization level, the percentage of individuals who have regular access to automobiles, and so on, it becomes clear that, should China become fully industrialized, that per capita level will be extremely high.
Comparisons between 19th and 20th century Japan and modern China are of, at best, limited value. Modern China is the product of a brutal wartime occupation, followed by and cocurrent with a devastating civil war. Whereas Japan actually profited, in the long run, by the widescale destruction of economic structures by American bombers (being forced by circumstance to build new factories, rather than retooling antiquated ones, as the US had to do, was a major factor in the much-touted efficency of Japan's factories in the 70s and 80s) China was left with an insecure government, largely uneducated workers, and massive damage. Unlike the Koreas,which found themselves in a similar situation, China was not administered by less damged countries in the post-war years. Further, the negative attention toward Japan in Western media came in an age when blatant racism was not only accepted, but actually expected. Also, large amounts of it were actually Japanese propaganda, designed to convince potential enemies not to take Japan seriously, allowing devastating morale drops in the critical opening hours of any conflict. (Which actually happened. A large part of the American military's failure to prepare for Pearl Harbor was the popular conception of Japanese pilots as buck-toothed primitives who could barely see well enough to pilot their crude aircraft.)
Your core point om media bias is valid, but your specific examples are less so.
Comparisons between 19th and 20th century Japan and modern China are of, at best, limited value. Modern China is the product of a brutal wartime occupation, followed by and cocurrent with a devastating civil war. Whereas Japan actually profited, in the long run, by the widescale destruction of economic structures by American bombers (being forced by circumstance to build new factories, rather than retooling antiquated ones, as the US had to do, was a major factor in the much-touted efficency of Japan's factories in the 70s and 80s) China was left with an insecure government, largely uneducated workers, and massive damage. Unlike the Koreas,which found themselves in a similar situation, China was not administered by less damged countries in the post-war years. Further, the negative attention toward Japan in Western media came in an age when blatant racism was not only accepted, but actually expected. Also, large amounts of it were actually Japanese propaganda, designed to convince potential enemies not to take Japan seriously, allowing devastating morale drops in the critical opening hours of any conflict. (Which actually happened. A large part of the American military's failure to prepare for Pearl Harbor was the popular conception of Japanese pilots as buck-toothed primitives who could barely see well enough to pilot their crude aircraft.)
Your core point om media bias is valid, but your specific examples are less so.