French President Emmanuel Macron rejected the idea that China had handled the coronavirus outbreak better than Western democracies in an interview published in Financial Times, Reuters reported.

FT quoted him as saying that there was no comparison between countries where information flowed freely and citizens could criticise their governments and those where the 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,” Macron told the publication.

“We don't know. There are clearly things that have happened that we don't know about.”