India has recently launched vaccine diplomacy against the South Asian countries, faster and more ambitiously than China.
“Having a disease without Medicine is a natural disaster; having medicine you can’t afford is a human disaster.” This is a line from the 2018 Chinese film I Am Not the God of Medicine, which tells the story of a trader who goes to India to buy inexpensive anti-cancer drugs on his behalf, drawing attention to India’s advanced pharmaceutical industry. In fact, India is also the world’s largest producer of vaccines.
The Chinese Communist Party has recently faced a strong rival in India in vaccine diplomacy. While the CCP claims that more than 10 heads of state and government leaders have been vaccinated with Sinopharm’s China Biocap inactivated vaccine, at least 50 countries have made requests to buy it. Leaders from Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey, Serbia, Jordan and other countries have also taken the lead in receiving Chinese vaccines. The CCP has also pledged to provide the New Crown (CCP virus) vaccine to a number of countries, including the Philippines, Cambodia and Myanmar.
However, in countries such as Myanmar, Maldives, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, India has now jumped the gun and donated vaccines in a much bigger way. The Indian government has proposed a “Neighbourhood First” program, which is expected to send 20 million doses of the vaccine to South Asian countries.
Asked about India’s vaccine diplomacy, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that the choice of vaccine should be left up to each country, and that there should be no vicious competition, let alone “confrontation,” on the issue.
India has launched the world’s largest vaccination program since Jan. 16, with 300 million people expected to be vaccinated with the new crown in the coming months. China aims to vaccinate 50 million people by the Lunar New Year in February. As of Jan. 27, Chinese health officials said China had completed 22,767,000 doses of the New Crown vaccine.
Covishield, the Oxford-AstraZeneca New Crown vaccine licensed by the United Kingdom for manufacture in India, is manufactured by the Serum Institute of India and is the mainstay vaccine in India.
India is the world’s largest vaccine producer
But India has an advantage over China in the pharmaceutical sector. India is the world’s largest producer of generic drugs and vaccines, and the Serum Institute of India, which makes 80% of its vaccines for export, is one of the cheapest vaccines in the world. About 70 percent of the vaccines used in the WHO-promoted vaccination scale-up program are made in India. The Serum Institute of India is based in Pune, Maharashtra, in western India, a place where the pharmaceutical industry is clustered alongside Mumbai.
Wu Binglin, a 30-year-old Taiwanese youth who has been working near New Delhi, India, for nearly six years, said Indian drugs are “so cheap that it’s exaggerated,” citing the example of panadol, a painkiller that translates as “prana pain” in Taiwan. “The price in Taiwan is 46 times higher than that of generic drugs with the same efficacy in India.
Wu Binglin, who works in the manufacturing industry in India, has written several articles on his observations of India’s political and economic society since 2017, saying that his physician relative in Myanmar had just received the new crown vaccine sent by India to Myanmar. He points out that pharmaceuticals have been one of the few economic industries in India that have led the world. According to public information from India’s Board of Investment, India’s pharmaceutical industry will be worth $41 billion in 2020, ranking 14th in the world; if you take into account the phenomenon of ultra-cheap Indian drugs, production has leapfrogged many rivals to reach the third place in the world, directly forced the world’s first U.S. pharmaceutical industry.
He said India has partnered with the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca to produce Covishield, the new crown vaccine, at the Serum Institute of India, which produces about 60 million doses of the new crown vaccine each month and will continue to expand its capacity.
India launched the world’s largest vaccination program on Jan. 16, with 300 million Indians expected to be vaccinated with Neocon in the coming months.
India fast-tracks delivery of Neocrown vaccine to South Asia to counter China
Liu Qifeng, associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences and director of the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies at Flame University (India), further pointed out that India currently has two mainstay vaccines, one is Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Oxford-AstraZeneca Covishield, manufactured under license by the Serum Institute of India in Pune, and the other is Bharat Biotech (Bharat Biotech) manufactured Covaxin in relatively small quantities. These two vaccines can be stored at normal refrigerated or frozen temperatures, unlike those from Moderna and Pfizer in the United States, which must be refrigerated at -70 degrees, so they are more suitable for African and Asian countries that do not have a complete cold chain.
Liu Qifeng, who teaches at Fleming University in Pune where the Serum Institute is located, pointed out that India’s pharmaceutical strength is very strong, including the Serum Institute of India is the world’s main force in vaccine production, and 65% of the vaccines given to children around the world have at least one produced by this institute. Therefore, India has a base for vaccine diplomacy, especially for countries around the Indian Ocean, which has its political implications. India used to be passive in dealing with China’s “One Belt, One Road” offensive, especially in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, where India’s strength could not compete with China’s infrastructure. The vaccine has been sent to Nepal and Bangladesh, and one million doses will be sent to Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Among them, Bangladesh originally negotiated with China Kexing for the vaccine, but China asked Bangladesh to bear part of the research and development costs, so Bangladesh turned to India for the free vaccine. India has an advantage in vaccines and medicine, many countries in Africa have a long history of using Indian vaccines and trust the quality of Indian pharmaceuticals, and the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covishield, a collaboration between India and the UK, is 62% to 90% effective.
Biden‘s Indo-Pacific policy is not yet clear India’s anti-China action active
The new U.S. President Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy is still unclear, and India’s anti-China actions are still active. In addition to playing vaccine diplomacy, Indian media rumors that the Indian government intends to permanently ban applications such as Jitterbug, Baidu, WeChat and Alibaba. Liu Qifeng said WeChat has been unavailable in India since May last year, logging in with an Indian cell phone number and unable to transmit a verification code. Jitterbug’s team of 2,000 people in India has also started laying off staff. Liu Qifeng believes that India’s ban on Chinese APPs shows that the Indian government does not welcome Chinese investment in India, because the Indian government amended the investment ordinance in the spring of last year (2020), stipulating that every case of investment in India must be specially reported for review by the countries bordering India, and previously such an investment ban only applied to Pakistani and Bangladeshi investment cases, and now includes China.
China’s goal is to vaccinate 50 million people before the Lunar New Year in February.
Liu Qifeng believes this is due to the border conflict between India and China last year in April and May, and the deadly conflict that erupted in the Garhwan Valley in June, India issued an investment decree aimed at sending a signal to discourage Indian folk from having too much contact with China. Second, India fears that the Chinese Communist Party is infiltrating India through WeChat. For example, China has repeatedly invited Indian journalists to go on free trips to China for civic propaganda and contact through WeChat. One recent espionage case was the arrest of a senior Indian journalist by the Indian government on charges that the journalist had taken money from a Chinese Communist intelligence unit to write against the Dalai Lama, and that the Chinese Communist intelligence unit was trying to steal information from the Indian Defense Ministry through him. So India banned apps like WeChat for an unspecified reason: not wanting the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate Indian society.
Modi recently awarded the Padma Vibhushan to former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which Liu Qifeng said is the highest of the “Lotus Series of Medals (Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri)” awarded to people from all walks of Life who have made outstanding contributions to India. The highest level of the “Lotus Series” (Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri), which is awarded to about seven people every year. The highest ranking medal in India is the Bharat Ratna, followed by the Lotus Order of Merit. Abe is the second Japanese to be awarded this medal, and the recipients are only eligible if they have made outstanding contributions in politics and are well known.
Liu Qifeng believes that this is because Shinzo Abe and Modi have a personal relationship, and Japan also provides India with some key technology, but also participated in the exercise with India. Modi’s move is to identify with the role played by Shinzo Abe in the Indo-Pacific strategy, because when Abe came to power, he proposed a quadrilateral diamond alliance of democratic countries, which is now known as the Quadrilateral Architecture (QUAD) concept. After Trump came to power, he took Abe’s proposed quadrilateral architecture as the basis and reconstructed QUAD 2.0 to form a quadrilateral coalition against the Chinese structure. Modi’s award to Abe is an important signal to the countries concerned that the Indian government will continue to rely on the Quadrilateral Security Architecture as the basis for the future development of the Indo-Pacific strategy.
Sinovac, a Chinese company, produces the New Crown vaccine.
India plays leader in quadrilateral architecture
Liu Qifeng said the Indian political class is still watching the Biden New Deal, and Biden’s future attitude toward China will determine many things, but India, like other U.S. allies, wants to secure the foundation that Trump has solidified before the U.S.-China strategic policy takes shape. India is playing an active role as a leader in the quadrilateral architecture. The most recent notable example is the cooperation between India and France in a joint air force exercise called “Desert Knights” on the northern border from January 21 to 24, in which the Indian Air Force (IAF) sent French-made Rafale fighter jets, as well as its mainstay Russian-made Su-30MKI fighter jets, and French Air Force Airbus refueling aircraft. The IAF is sending its French Rafale and its original Russian Su-30MKI, along with French Airbus refueling aircraft and airborne early warning aircraft to conduct air contract exercises at Jodhpur in western India in response to a possible future Chinese military threat on the border. Another news is that Germany plans to send warships to Japan, which will also pass through the Indian Ocean, and the Indo-Pacific architecture will change from QUAD to QUAD-Plus, bringing in continental countries, in which India is involved, because India has to deal with the pressure of the Chinese Communist Party. India tries to strengthen its own foundation, and multilateralism has always been India’s specialty. India takes advantage of the structure laid down by the U.S. and Japan to enhance his strength in it. India’s role in QUAD is somewhat similar to the role played by Japan in CPTPP after the United States withdrew from TPP.
Liu Qifeng further pointed out that when Trump first came to power in 2016 and 17, the policy towards China was not yet clear, and at that Time there was a view in India that if the United States did not intervene in the Indian Ocean, India should strengthen cooperation with medium-sized countries in East Asia, and both India and Japan are medium-sized countries that can strengthen cooperation.
China has recently met a strong Indian rival in vaccine diplomacy.
The Chinese Communist Party is pushing the Indian border with “sausage slicing” and back alley hitting tactics
The recent skirmishes on the Sino-Indian border are a continuation of the previous conflicts, and a series of talks between field commanders have been unable to solve the problem. The conflict is in Sikkim, not far from Bhutan and the Tonkin plateau, where clashes also took place in May 2020 and where the Indian side believes the Chinese Communist Party is causing trouble along the border. Sikkim is politically symbolic for India, as the former kingdom became India’s 22nd state after a referendum in 1975. Sikkim’s borders are critical, the only area where India can respond offensively to a Communist incursion, and the only area where the Indian military has a topographical and tactical advantage along the Himalayan border.
After the second Xi-Mo meeting in 2019, India’s diplomatic and strategic circles felt that things would move in the direction of military conflict and strategic confrontation,” Liu said. “realism”.
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