Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba Group
On Friday, the Jack Ma Foundation announced that it would be sending 500,000 coronavirus test kits and a million protective face masks to the US.
The bundles are due to arrive on US shores soon, on one of the only flights from China allowed to land in the US after president Donald Trump’s travel ban was put in place last week.
China has yet again become the world's factory, this time putting its command economy into action for an airlift to the US. The donation demonstrates China’s political and economic power goes well beyond the Belt and Road Initiative and its focus on emerging markets. Sending aid to the world's largest economy is a show of China's abilities in testing times.
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Over Twitter – the foundation's PR team must use a VPN to access a website blocked by China's Great Firewall and get the attention of a president well-known to use the social media platform – the foundation stated that "the pandemic we face today can no longer be resolved by any individual country," and that "we need to combat the virus by working hand-in-hand", before going on to say that "at this moment we can't beat the virus unless we eliminate boundaries to resources and share our know-how and hard-learned lessons".