On Trusting China to Do the Right Thing
Here is a fun story I have been following over the past few weeks, as it may become somewhat relevant to me:
The spokesperson for Electricite de France (EDF) said on Thursday that while it was “not an emergency situation” at the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant, located in China’s southern Guangdong province, it was a “serious situation that is evolving.”
If the reactor was in France, the company would have shut it down already due to “the procedures and practices in terms of operating nuclear power plants in France,” the spokesperson said.
So let’s see. You give support and funding to people and organizations under the direct or indirect control of the Chinese Communist Party, related to highly dangerous materials and procedures. When things go awry, you have two choices:
First, you can face the music and say — as the French electricity company is saying — that you wish the Chinese would do the right thing now, but you cannot tell the Chinese overseers of the project what to do, because you did in fact agree to give funding and assistance to work being done under the ultimate regulatory control of the Chinese government.
Or second, you can do what Dr. Anthony Fauci has done, after supporting and funding work on dangerous materials and procedures in Wuhan, under the ultimate regulatory control of the Chinese government.
Question: Why do Western people ever think it is a reasonable idea to trust the Chinese Communist Party with dangerous materials, procedures, and research, let alone to fund and encourage them in such endeavors? Do they actually trust the Chinese leaders to uphold the standards of safety and transparency typical (or formerly typical) in the West? Do they actually believe the Chinese leaders care at all about any lives other than their own, whether within or beyond China’s borders?
Are they truly that oblivious to the reality of communist totalitarianism, in China or anywhere else? Or are they merely that greedy? Or is it perhaps both?