I am still confused how people think that it being an accidental "lab leak" is any more damning of the role China played in the initial outbreak. China made a lot of mistakes and also kept other countries in the dark for way too long no matter the origin. It can also serve as a warning against authoritarian models of rule.
My criticism doesn't mean I think we shouldn't investigate the origins either. It is in the world's public interest to err on the side of knowing too much so that maybe the chance of this happening again is reduced.
Huh. I think most people find that if something "happens to you" it's less your fault than if you "made it happen". If your house burns down from a gas line explosion nearby, that's bad luck for you. If it burns down because you had a pile of paper next to your stove while operating it, that's on you.
How it was handled after the fact is probably similar (though again, if it was your own source, then it probably meant you had even earlier warning), but I believe it's mostly down to "things that happen to you versus things you cause".
I have no qualms about China conducting research in this regard, other countries are doing it too and we would be naive to think otherwise. However, if it is proven to be true that gain of function research was being conducted at the Wuhan laboratory, it highlights the sheer stupidity of the government in thinking they could build a military bio-weapons research laboratory in the heart of a major city center. Western nations that do have such facilities place them far away from high-density urban populations, precisely as a last-ditch measure to mitigate the impact of an (eventual) breach.
It's worse for the CCP if it boils down to incompetence rather than malice. Becoming a laughingstock of the world and not being taken seriously is perhaps their deepest fear.
* Utter incompetency. Got to promote the 'working class' in positions of authority across the board regardless of actual qualifications. Got to follow ideological prescriptions to a T regardless of real-world outcomes.
* Extreme message control. The communist society is perfect, except for those horrible people that refuse to support the party 100%. And also moving every day closer to perfection. Don't you dare ask questions, because then you become the reason why perfection has not been achieved, and the Party, as the legitimate representative of the people, will be justified to act against you.
These are not military, but it doesn't matter.
It's typical CYA stuff from corrupt institutions that cannot abide transparency. For some, the appearance of having made a mistake or having been incompetent is so uncomfortable that they will stonewall all possible investigations to avoid looking like they've made mistakes. Even when those mistakes were just that--mistakes.
Let's make that mistake and blackout in the scale.
Let's compare China's mistake and blackout against US, the closest nation in population and economy scale.
Well, now we see that China's mistake and blackout are indeed less damaging then US' mistake and blackout...
Oh, how incompetent. They shut down a 10MM population city overnight...
If any other one can do that for a 1MM population city, we'd have a nice vacation in some random city on earth...
> Well, now we see that China's mistake and blackout are indeed less damaging then US' mistake and blackout...
What mistake and blackout did the US make?
Incompetence? I think the regime came out of this pretty well. They’ve completely disrupted literally every country in the world, and China itself has been only marginally affected, lacking any of the truly large waves that devastated the US and India.