Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that there were gray areas in the management of the coronavirus epidemic by China, telling the Financial Times that there were “obviously things that happened that we do not know “
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“We do not have a kind of naivety which consists in saying that (the management of the epidemic by China, note) it is much stronger. We do not know. And even, there are obviously things that happened that we do not know, “said the president in an interview published Thursday.
He was asked whether authoritarian regimes were better able to manage these crises.
Emmanuel Macron stressed, said the Elysee Thursday evening, that in democracies, which guarantee freedom of information and expression, the management of the crisis was transparent and was the subject of debate, unlike regimes where the information and expression are controlled.
The head of state considers that it is “false to say that democracies are managing the crisis less well because transparency, the free flow of information are on the contrary a considerable asset to be more effective,” added the presidency. of the Republic.
The head of state’s reservations about Beijing’s handling of the crisis match the doubts expressed by London and Washington.
The United Kingdom has just warned China on Thursday that it should answer “tough questions about the virus’s appearance and why it hasn’t been stopped earlier.”
The Trump administration, for its part, accused Beijing of having “concealed” the seriousness of the epidemic when it started in China and on Tuesday froze the American financial contribution to the functioning of the World Health Organization (WHO). reproaching for having aligned itself with the Chinese positions.
Russia in turn intervened Thursday evening, to defend Beijing. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday in a conversation with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that accusations against Beijing, suspected of misinformation about the new coronavirus, which appeared in China, were “counterproductive”.
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