CHINA, THE EMPIRE OF HYPOCRISY

[Lee]

The Manila Times    31 Aug 2023   Ben Kritz

Quote

 

DUPLICITOUS messaging from China, either directly or by way of its numerous paid media hacks here and elsewhere, has become so familiar that we tend to become numb to it, but the Big Red Regime’s reaction to the controversial release of contaminated wastewater from Japan’s destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex stands out for its obnoxious hypocrisy.

For those who have not kept up with the news, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, last Thursday began releasing wastewater from the facility into the ocean. Most of the billions of liters of wastewater, which is contaminated with tritium, carbon-14, strontium-90, and iodine-129, was collected as a result of efforts to contain one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents, the result of the plant being wrecked by the tsunami caused by the powerful 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

Obviously, releasing water with any amount of non-natural radioactive substances in it into the ocean is not ideal, but in this case, it is the option with the least potential harm. According to a plan endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and approved by the Japanese government, the wastewater will be treated to remove the strontium and iodine isotopes, dilute the carbon-14 (which is the least dangerous of radioactive byproducts anyway), and reduce the level of tritium to about 2.5 percent of the level considered safe by IAEA and Japanese government standards. To further reduce any safety risk, the wastewater will be discharged at a slow rate, with the entire process anticipated to take up to 30 years to complete.

To be clear, that level is still about 125 times the average natural concentration of tritium in northern hemisphere ocean waters, so again, it’s not ideal. But as a practical matter, it is not actually harmful to human health and, as far as current research knows, will not have a detrimental effect on sea life. The alternatives to the controlled release are not all acceptable; because there is so much water — about 1.34 million metric tons, with more being collected constantly as the long, slow cleanup process progresses — the risk of an accidental release is growing, and that would make an already bad situation much worse.

The Japanese decision to release the Fukushima wastewater is being widely protested, but no country has been more virulent about it than China. Immediately after the scheduled start of the release, a government-sponsored poll appeared on the Chinese social media network Weibo, ostensibly seeking to measure public opinion of the news. The three choices of answers in the poll were, “It violates international conventions and international marine protection laws,” “It is abnormal behavior that does not conform to common sense,” and “It seriously damages the ecological environment.”

Apart from condemnation from the communist government, a ban on Japanese seafood imports has been imposed. What is even more execrable, even for a government for which bad behavior is usually a matter of policy, is that the Chinese leadership has tacitly encouraged the open persecution of Japanese citizens and businesses in China.

China’s pretense of environmental concern is hypocritical in the extreme because, as the biggest nuclear energy user in Asia, China is, unsurprisingly, also the region’s biggest nuclear polluter. Wastewater discharges into major river systems and the ocean from Chinese nuclear plants are a matter of routine operational policy, and unlike the Japanese plan, no particular treatment processes apart from simple dilution are practiced. Consequently, the discarded water contains levels of tritium and other radioactive isotopes several hundred times higher than the estimated concentrations in the Fukushima wastewater. Just how high and just how much radioactive wastewater China releases into the environment is not clearly known because the Chinese government, in keeping with its selfimage as being exempt from any sort of international standards or cooperation that it deems inconvenient, does not report these things and keeps the IAEA at arm’s length to prevent any sort of embarrassing discoveries.

The Chinese government’s response to Japan’s pointing out this hypocrisy was, again, unsurprisingly, utterly childish. The release of contaminated wastewater from Chinese nuclear plants “was not the same thing,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman told reporters, because the Fukushima wastewater was the result of an accident, as though there is somehow a different quality to the radioactivity. The Chinese government also stressed that Taiwan and South Korea “are doing the same thing” by regularly releasing wastewater from their nuclear facilities. That is not actually untrue, but on the other hand, Taiwan and South Korea are exemplary in their reporting to their own people and to the IAEA and do utilize some decontamination processes before discharging the water. And China hasn’t banned their seafood imports or directed its citizens to harass the citizens and businesses of those two nations beyond the normal level of jingoistic prejudice they already have to endure.

It is quite clear that the Fukushima release plan has been nothing more than a timely opportunity for the Chinese regime to provide a distraction for its own people in the face of a wobbly economy and a recent and wholly unanticipated erosion of the effectiveness of its geopolitical bullying in the Asia-Pacific region. It is not something that this government or any other, except perhaps Japan, needs to react to; as the saying attributed to Napoleon goes, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

 

China, the empire of hypocrisy | The Manila Times

[Kingpin]

Kritz is a well-known globalist parasite, check his other MSM "reporting".

[Lee1154]

15 hours ago, Lee said:

The Manila Times    31 Aug 2023   Ben Kritz

China, the empire of hypocrisy | The Manila Times

The last paragraph says it all.  The same tactic is used by the Biden administration.  The attempt is to divide the people by creating a different enemy so that the politicians are protected from becoming noticed as the real enemy.

[scott h]

31 minutes ago, Lee1154 said:

The same tactic is used by the Biden administration.

Its called "wag the dog" tactic, there was even a movie by that name. Its been used by every politician since the Roman Republic, if not even earlier 

[Mike J]

Posts are straying into US politics.  Please stay on topic and follow forum rules if you want to post comments.