China has been the world's largest energy consumer and carbon dioxide emitter. The evolution trend of China's coal consumption and its driving mechanism have always been a topic of concern to researchers and policy makers. Taking China's total coal consumption of 2.8 billion tons of standard coal in 2013 as the key time point, a comparative analysis of the differences in the dynamics of coal consumption mechanisms has been conducted. An extended LMDI model based on the classical IPAT identity and an input output-structural decomposition analysis (IO-SDA) model were adopted to determine the main driving factors for coal consumption in China. The impacts and influences of various factors on coal consumption were different in different development stages. China's coal consumption was mainly driven by the effects of economic growth, energy intensity, industrial structure and energy structure. The slowdown in GDP growth since the economy entered the "New Normal", the in-depth adjustment of the industrial structure and energy structure, and the continuous decline in energy consumption intensity were the key to the decline in total coal consumption since 2013. Based on the demand-side structural decomposition analysis, China's coal consumption was mainly affected by capital formation, exports, and urban household consumption. The embodied coal consumption of Chinese exports has peaked after the global financial crisis in 2007. Coal consumption induced by urban household consumption surpassed export-induced coal consumption in 2017, which became the second largest demand-side driver of China's total coal consumption growth. Based on the perspective of final demand, coal consumption by sectoral industry performed a changing feature of "driven by exports→driven by capital formation→driven by urban household consumption". The industry's coal resource dependence has gradually decreased. China's total coal consumption has entered a peak stage with the maximum value appearing in 2013.