I have been doing my best to find critical information on the viability of Thorium based nuclear reactors (because they sound too good to be true).

Everyone sings their praises, but what engineering challenges are there and are those engineering challenges large enough to discourage their development/adoption?

The biggest thing I have found is that the salt solution for Thorium reactors is quite corrosive and that is challenging to contain.

It generally sounds really promising - even the Wiki page for thorium MSR sings its praises.

Why wouldn't it work? Why isn't the world throwing shit-loads of money at this? Is China enlightened or is this some kind of meme-ware technology they fell for (or are trying to convince others to waste their money on)?

China built the world’s largest high speed rail network (24,000 miles of tracks) and the first rails were laid down in 2007.

If you think they can’t do this in 9 years, you haven’t been paying attention.

Nuclear is far from the best source of electricity, but it is far less damaging to the environment than coal or NG if handled and designed properly. If countries can work together to put them in places that protect from major earthquakes or other natural disasters then I think we can get some decent movement on reduce GHG emissions from power plants.

That would be awesome, but unfortunately the CCP have proven to us that we can't trust their word.

China says a lot of things

This could also be a feint to get DoD money into the technology.