Transcript: NPR's Interview With Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai About The Coronavirus

NPR's Steve Inskeep talked to Cui Tiankai, China's ambassador to the U.S. They spoke as China faces one of the largest crises of its history; the coronavirus is a public health problem but it's also economic and political. The full interview is below.

We have an editor who closely follows China, who regards this as China's worst crisis in years, because it is a health crisis, but also an economic crisis and a political crisis. How severe is this, in your view, compared to other crises that China has faced in recent years?

Well, this is a very big challenge to us. And I think in a sense, this is very big challenge to the entire international community as we develop, as our economy grows, how we take care of public health needs. How do we respond to epidemics like this? So this is a challenge for the entire international community. For any government. And we are, somebody is saying...

[At this point in the interview, there was a brief technical difficulty that was quickly fixed.]

...the challenge and the response is also unprecedented. I think this is quite true. I know we are doing our utmost to contain, control the virus, and provide treatment to the people, and reduce its impact on economic and social activities, and we're still doing whatever we can do right now.

Has this become a test of the effectiveness of China's governing system?

Well, as I said, this could be a big challenge to any government, to any governing system.

But it's your government that is facing the test.

Actually, you see, yeah, we are at the forefront. We are at the forefront. Actually long before this outbreak, we already set a goal for ourselves, which is the modernization of our governance system and governance capacity. We believe this should be the overall goal for our reform process, and this epidemic has proved that we have set the right goal. So we have to do our best to reach that goal. But this is an ongoing process. You see, there will always be new challenges and we always have to make new progress. We should never stop. I'm sure we will learn more from this outbreak and do a better job.

Set the right goal, you said. And then there is the question of what went wrong that you would like to correct. I know the two top officials in Hubei Province, the center