Silicon Valley engineer and investor Tom Gong was born and raised in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province. He studied at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. So, when the COVID-19 situation worsened, he reached out to his alumni on WeChat. The result was a group named "Wuhan United" created on January 23, which now has 10 core members in the U.S. and 45 volunteers around the globe. So far, they've shipped around 30 tons of protective equipment to China. 

When CGTN team met some of its members, they were working on their latest and biggest shipment. A group of four was sitting around laptops monitoring the situation and Tom Gong was facetiming one of the new charity partners, MAP International.

The team watched as a MAP International Senior Communications Officer Martin Smith showed them their warehouse in Brunswick, Georgia, filled with pallets that Wuhan United had made possible.

The shipment contained 1.6 million masks. In the next step, MAP International will repackage and ship them to Wuhan and five other Chinese cities.

"Six different cities. About 40 to 50 hospitals," Gong told Smith. "We are making the exact distribution plan right now."

Wuhan United has already helped make possible seven shipments with close to three million masks and 17,000 protective suits. They've also sent gloves and shoe covers.

One key partner is the charity organization Direct Relief, which has praised Wuhan United's ability to navigate complicated logistics.   

"I talked to a lot of different people about how they moved their stuff to China. Some carry it like a luggage passenger, some through a passenger plane," said Gong.

"The approach Wuhan United takes is to work with major nonprofit organizations, like Direct Relief and MAP and major corporations, because they are very resourceful. And they do want to help. But they lack knowledge of how to operate in China. So what we to do is establish scalable and also repeatable. And everything is compliant."

How is Wuhan United able to do this?

Gong is a Silicon Valley engineer and investor who has used his knowledge and network to get things moving quickly.

In fact, during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Gong was a program manager at Google which had worked with Direct Relief. This time, he knew they might have access to medical supplies like masks. That's why he reached out to them for Wuhan United's very first shipment.

"Fortunately, we got it through and before the plane landed in Guangzhou," said Gong. "They did customs clearance electronically so that the materials could arrive in Wuhan January 31. And on January 30, the hospital had declared the SOS to the whole society. They ran out of stock. There's no protection. So it was very timely."

The fact certainly helps that Gong is the co-founder of AliExpress, one of the largest cross-border E-commerce platforms in the world.

He also founded a startup in Wuhan. Other Wuhan United volunteers have backgrounds in hi-tech and project management. The group operates like a Silicon Valley startup, with daily meetings from 10 pm to midnight since most have other full-time jobs.

The COVID-19 situation is also personal for Gong, who has a brother living in Wuhan, as well as a brother-in-law and sister-in-law, both doctors at Wuhan Union Hospital.

"People are dying. If doctors go on without protection they can get infected. We view this as a battle. You don't have ammunition going in, the battle will be lost," said Gong. "We are very moved by the medical staff, doctors, nurses and their stories of how they are helping. Also, the people in Wuhan, they are very resilient in this crisis. That's our motivation."