PARIS – French President Emmanuel Macron dismissed that China handled the coronovirus outbreak better than Western democracies in a meeting distributed in Friday’s Financial Times.

The FT quoted him as saying that there was no examination between countries where data streamed unreservedly and residents could reprimand their governments and those where the fact of the matter 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,” Macron told the FT. “We don’t know. There are clearly things that have happened that we don’t know about.”

Frictions between China and France came to light earlier this week when the Chinese ambassador was summoned by the foreign minister after his embassy posted on its website what French lawmakers called “fake news”.