AFAQ NEWS – French President Emmanuel Macron has questioned China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
Mr Macron told the Financial Times it was “naive” to suggest China had dealt better with the crisis, adding things “happened that we don’t know about”.
More people have died in the US and several European countries than in China where the virus emerged.
The US and the UK have also cast doubt on China’s figures and the speed with which it responded or alerted others.
However, the World Health Organization (WHO) has praised China’s measures.
Worldwide, more than two million people have been infected and more than 145,000 have died.
The US,France, Italy and Spain are amongst the worst affected countries.
What’s behind this French-Chinese confrontation?
France has seen 141,000 cases of Covid-19 and nearly 18,000 deaths. China has recorded 4,632 deaths – including an extra 1,290 deaths announced on Friday in the city of Wuhan, where the pandemic started and where a strict lockdown has only recently been lifted.
Local officials said early reporting there had been delayed and inaccurate.
President Macron’s interview came after a weekend of tension which saw the summoning of the Chinese ambassador to Paris by the French foreign ministry to express disapproval over an article on the Chinese embassy’s website that said Western countries had left the elderly to die in care homes.
The article – by an unnamed diplomat – was seen by France as a reference to the situation in its care homes, which make up a large number of deaths attributed to the disease caused by coronavirus, Covid-19.
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China dismissed the row as a “misunderstanding”. Government spokesman Zhao Lijian said China had never made any negative comments about how France was coping with the epidemic “and has no intention of making any”.
Mr Macron was asked if China’s authoritarian response to bring the outbreak under control had exposed the weakness of Western democracies, and responded that there was no comparison between open societies and those where truth was suppressed.
“Given these differences, the choices made and what China is today, which I respect, let’s not be so naive as to say it’s been much better at handling this,” he said.