Emmanuel Macron calls, in an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday April 16, not to be "naive" concerning the management by China of the coronavirus pandemic. The French president considers it impossible to compare countries where information flows freely with others where freedom of expression is reduced.

"We do not have a kind of naivete 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 which are have passed that we do not know, "he said. He was asked whether authoritarian regimes were better able to manage these crises.

In the evening, the Élysée clarified the words of Emmanuel Macron. In democracies, "the situation of the epidemic and the management of the crisis are transparent and are the subject of debate", it was underlined. "This is not the case in regimes where information and expression are controlled." "It is wrong to say that democracies are managing the crisis less well because transparency and the free flow of information are, on the contrary, a considerable asset in order to be more effective," it added.

London and Washington too

The reservations of the French head of state on the management of the crisis by Beijing join the doubts expressed by London and Washington. The United Kingdom has just warned China on Thursday that it should answer "difficult questions about the appearance of the virus and why it was not stopped earlier".

The United States has repeatedly accused Beijing in recent weeks of hiding the scale and scope of the epidemic, and understating its record. China denounced "indecent" comments and called on the US authorities to stop politicizing a public health issue.

Russia in turn intervened Thursday evening, to defend Beijing. Russian President Vladimir Putin in a conversation with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping called accusations against Beijing suspected of misinformation about the new coronavirus that appeared in China "counterproductive".

With AFP and Reuters

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