EDF & China: enthusiasm for a Chinese reactor?

It's not just that EDF owns the Bradwell-on-Sea site, which it bought with all of the other nuclear power stations from the failed, privatised British Energy comany some time ago. EDF have had a China connection for some time, with a Sizewell C type EPR (European Pressurised Reactor) being built in China. This was designed by the now collapsed French Areva company which EDF have taken over with French government help, adding to their own ongoing financial crisis.
So how interesting that the Sizewell B Newsletter in January announces with some positivity that their Chinese partner's own design reactor, the  HPR1000, has started its approval process for Bradwell in Essex with the UK's Office of Nuclear Regulation.
The application is significantly a joint EDF/China General Nuclear Company effort, through a new joint company GNS (General Nuclear System Ltd).
It's also to be for a "version" of the HPR1000, a process that should take about four years. Do we must await developments?
No, because that doesn't mean to say that a planning consent process can't be started as well in parallel.
Aside from concern with colleagues at Bradwell, does it affect Suffolk?  And maybe even Hinkley C if that can't get up and running in time.
What might happen? Maybe the Chimese HPR1000 reactor would get EDF off the Sizewell and Hinkley hooks. The EPR seems to be taking a long, long time to build, and is extremely expensive in any case....and, as we explain above, it also looks as though the Hinkley subsidy is going to prove very, very expensive.