During a Saturday press briefing in Albany, N.Y., Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) thanked the Chinese government for facilitating a donation of 1,000 ventilators to the Empire State via foundations set up by Alibaba founders Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai.
A digital slide displayed during the official livestream feed of Cuomo’s briefing read, “Thank you to the Chinese government and Ambassador Huang, Chinese Consul General.”
Transcript below.
China is remarkably the repository for all of these orders — ventilators, PPE — it all goes back to China, which long-term we have to figure out why we wound up in this situation where we don’t have the manufacturing capacity in this country.
I understand supply chain issues. I understand the cost of manufacturing, but it is a public health reason, as we’ve all learned the hard way,why we need the capacity in this country to do this, but anyway, it all comes back to China, so New York has been shopping in China.
We’re not really China experts here international relations is not what we do on a daily basis. I’ve been to China before when I was at Secretary did a trade mission with China, so I have a basic understanding but we went to the Asia society to help us navigate China I asked the White House to help us navigate China I spoke to the ambassador and we got really good news today that the Chinese government is going to facilitate a donation of 1,000 ventilators that will come into JFK today and I want to thank Joe Tsai and Clara Tsai and Jack Ma from Alibaba, and then that’s –but I’m not stating a preference — for their donation.
That’s going to be very helpful and I want to thank Ambassador Huang very much for his help in making all of this happen, because this is a big deal and it’s going to make a significant difference for us.
Via state-run news media, the Chinese government has attributed high failure rates of medical equipment produced in China to foreign suppliers of raw materials and improper use of its exports.
Coronavirus testing kits made in China had a 70 percent failure rate in Spain. Netherlands authorities recalled 600,000 defective medical masks imported from China.
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