To date, China has provided 165 million doses of the New Crown vaccine to Latin American countries. Of the vaccinated population in Latin America, the majority are using vaccines from China. Will China’s “vaccine diplomacy,” combined with the economic, military and technological ties that China has previously worked to forge, weaken U.S. influence in a region considered the traditional “backyard” of the United States?
Chinese vaccines dominate in Latin America
The Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank, says on its website that China has so far provided 165 million doses of the new crown vaccine to Latin American and Caribbean countries, with Mexico, Chile and Brazil receiving most of them.
The Financial Times reported on May 9 that the 10 most populous countries in Latin America have received 143.5 million doses of the New Crown vaccine, more than half of which came from China. When the Chinese vaccine arrived in Chile, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and other countries, the presidents of many countries personally went to the airport to greet them. Chile’s President Piñera has said that the Chinese vaccine has shown him “the light at the end of the tunnel.
Latin America and the Caribbean is the region with the worst outbreak of the new strain. The region has a total population of about 650 million, or 8 percent of the world’s population, but accounts for 35 percent of the world’s deaths due to NCC. According to the latest data from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), only 3% of the Latin American population has been fully vaccinated against Neoplasia as of today.
In many countries in Latin America, new cases and deaths are still on the rise. Many Caribbean countries – including the Bahamas, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago – have seen the number of new-crown deaths double in the last week. Costa Rica, Panama and parts of Honduras are also reporting a sharp increase in new infections.
Latin American and Caribbean countries are also currently facing vaccine shortages, and governments are also seeking vaccines globally, including from the United States and European countries, but also from China and Russia. Latin America has the most vaccines scheduled for purchase from European countries, however, China has the fastest vaccine shipments. Currently, the United States and Europe have shipped some amount of vaccine to Latin America.
There is concern that China will use the situation where its own vaccines dominate Latin America to try to weaken U.S. influence while winning the goodwill of Latin American countries.
Carolyn Bartholomew, chairwoman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a congressional subcommittee, said Thursday at the agency’s first hearing on China’s relations with Latin America: “China’s diplomatic efforts in the region over the past year to reverse the disaster that the New Crown epidemic has wrought on Chinese public relations even to the point of overexertion. They also simultaneously spread disinformation about the United States. Despite questions about the vaccine’s effectiveness, Beijing is now using it as leverage to woo Latin American and Caribbean governments.”
Carrie Bai’s fears are not unfounded. As soon as the first CoronaVac vaccines were released in Latin America, China began pouncing on wealthy countries in Europe and the United States, claiming that these rich countries were doing little to ensure rapid access to vaccines in poorer countries. Now, China is accusing the United States of “hoarding” vaccines while emphasizing that its own vaccines are helping Latin America cross the “immunization divide.
China uses vaccines to advance political and economic interests in Latin America
China’s “vaccine diplomacy” has made progress compared to the rejection of China in some parts of Latin America at the beginning of the outbreak. At the beginning of the outbreak, some countries in Latin America thought it was China that didn’t care and allowed the virus to spread beyond their borders. The son of the Brazilian president, Eduardo Bolsonaro, then chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, accused China of authoritarianism for slowing down the fight against the epidemic. Beijing’s reputation has taken a further hit in Peru. China’s export of cheap and unreliable new coronavirus detection equipment led to Peru’s early failures to contain the spread of the outbreak.
R. Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies at the United States Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, told the USCC hearing that the New Crown epidemic in Latin America gave China the opportunity to expand in Latin America and the Caribbean an opportunity to expand and increase their leverage.
In Brazil and the Dominican Republic, China used the vaccine as leverage to demand that the governments of those countries reverse their decision to once exclude Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from their 5G networks,” he said. In Paraguay, China tried to use the vaccine to lure the Paraguayan government into abandoning Taiwan. In Honduras, President Juan Orlando Hernandez promised to open a trade office in China to obtain the new vaccine crown.”
The Dominican Republic has joined the Trump administration’s “clean network” plan to exclude Huawei from the country’s 5G buildout. In February, Dominican President Luis Abinader said the country’s 5G network would not exclude Huawei.
In Brazil, Leonardo Euler, president of Brazil’s National Communications Agency (Anatel), said in April that the Brazilian government would not ban China’s Huawei from participating in this June’s 5G spectrum auction. The government of Brazilian President Jose Bosonaro last year banned Huawei from bidding to provide 5G networks for Brazilian operators. There are also reports that Brazilian Communications Minister Fábio Faria asked Huawei to provide vaccines for Brazil when he met with Huawei executives in Beijing in February. Currently, 85 percent of Brazil’s vaccines come from China’s Kexing.
Isolating Taiwan and getting Latin American and Caribbean countries to abandon it has been one of Beijing’s key goals in the region. Taiwan has 15 state diplomatic relations worldwide, and Latin America and the Caribbean account for nine of them.
Paraguayan Foreign Minister Euclides Acevedo said in March that Beijing had made clear its interest in establishing diplomatic relations with Paraguay in order to put pressure on the United States and Taiwan. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez (Juan Orlando Hernandez ) said on May 11 that a “diplomatic bridge” would be built, as suggested by China, in order to buy Chinese vaccines.
For now, the crisis between Paraguay and Honduras has been temporarily defused. The Biden administration announced May 17 that it would distribute about 80 million doses of New Crown vaccine worldwide by the end of June. Gayle Smith, the State Department’s coordinating officer for New Crown vaccine, said during a telephone briefing on May 19 that the U.S. has not yet made a final decision, but will consider the most needed and effective distribution method, and that the situation in Latin America has been a primary consideration for the U.S. According to a report in the Financial Times, citing Biden administration officials, Latin America will be treated as a priority because of the enormous pressure it is under from China.
Beijing has had success in luring other countries in Latin America before. Three Latin American countries, Panama, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 2017 and 2018. These three countries also became early recipients of the Chinese vaccine.
China’s support for populist governments in Latin America threatens democratic institutions
Derek Scissors, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), argues that China’s vaccine diplomacy is not terrible, especially when China’s vaccines are no more effective than those of the United States. China’s vaccines will go through ups and downs because they are good or bad on their own,” he said. The U.S. doesn’t need to make a big investment in that.”
The effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine has recently been questioned. Nearly 40 percent of the total population of the South American country of Chile has received at least one dose of the new crown pneumonia vaccine, one of the highest vaccination rates of any country in the world, behind only Israel and the United Kingdom. Ninety-three percent of Chile’s vaccine comes from China. In April, confirmed cases in Chile increased rather than decreased after vaccination, causing outsiders to question the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine. The Chilean government later said the results of the first real-world study of China’s Kexing Bio’s coronary disease vaccine showed it was 67 percent effective in preventing symptomatic infections.
The recent spike in new coronary infections in the East African island nation of Seychelles has again called into question the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine. Seventy-one percent of the Seychelles population had completed one dose of the vaccine, and 62% were fully vaccinated. Of those who had received two doses of the vaccine, 57% received the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine and 43% received the AstraZeneca vaccine.
According to data published by the World Health Organization, the AstraZeneca vaccine is 76% effective in preventing symptomatic infections; compared to the three vaccines currently in use in the United States, the Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective, the Modena vaccine is 94.1% effective, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is 72% effective.
Margaret Myers, head of the Asia and Latin America program at the nonprofit Dialogue for the Americas, said at the hearing that the post-epidemic era could be a turning point in relations between China and Latin America.
While for many years China’s overriding goal in Latin America has been access to resources, some of its ties should be to support the region’s recovery,” she said. This is the time when Latin America and the Caribbean need the most help, and they need capital, from all sides.”
She believes that some of China’s practices, corruption, lack of transparency and providing some countries with tools to control freedom of expression in the name of stability are very worrying, especially “at a time when the democratic institutions of Latin America and the Caribbean are in many cases under siege from within.” She believes that the United States must increase its engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean.
Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, said China’s support for leftist populism in Latin America and the Caribbean is the greatest threat to the United States and the region because most likely it will threaten the region’s democratic foundations.
China is an incubator of anti-American leftist populism, which in turn opens the door to broader Chinese developments,” he said. The initial rise to power of Venezuela’s Chavez, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Bolivia’s Evo Morales was not directly related to China’s activities in the region. …… Once in power, Chinese loans and other resources are critical to their consolidation and continuation of power. They will change the system, reduce transparency, undermine democratic institutions, etc.”
These populist governments, in turn, have become China’s biggest partners in Latin America and the Caribbean, he said, not only by promoting non-transparent government-to-government infrastructure projects, but also by increasing military engagement with the Chinese military and becoming partners in China’s technology and space activities.
Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia have all purchased military products from China. Venezuelan air defense forces reportedly used their Chinese-made JY-27 radar, which they were equipped with, to detect a U.S. Air Force F-22 stealth fighter flying close to Venezuelan airspace. Bolivia has ordered a number of light armored transport vehicles from China. Recently, it was reported that Argentina intends to purchase 12 JF-17 Dragon fighter jets from China.
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