The ability not to take the environment into account is one of China's major competitive advantages

I suppose we will just have to wait until the cost of dealing with their local ecological damage outweighs the Chinese interest in not addressing the problem. I can't see how we could force or convince them to take action earlier, though we could make it a little bit less economically attractive for them to develop industry dirtily. At present, the ability not to take the environment into account is one of China's major competitive advantages over the West. Tariffs compensating for this sort of advantage have been used against smaller countries in the past (e.g. Vietnamese shrimp), but there's no actual environmental benef if the country choses to keep on polluting, pay the tariff and compete regardless. As is likely in the Chinese case.
None of this absolves the rest of us from doing something about global warming, though barring prohibitive regulation, we in the West will have to face the fact that if we force our industires to use cleaner, more expensive technology, they will move to China. Which brings me back to the start. We will have to wait until the Chinese also hate pollution.