As the global race to get vaccinated intensifies, the New Crown vaccine is increasingly becoming a tool to extend its reach. China is banking on the vaccine to bring Beijing‘s influence wherever it goes. But experts say skepticism about China’s vaccine has never ceased, and it is too early to claim that China has reached its goal of vaccine diplomacy with more Western countries set to join the vaccine distribution.
China’s early containment of the New crown outbreak gave Beijing the opportunity to provide vaccines to other regions. Last December, China approved the first domestic New Crown vaccine without releasing clinical trial data. As of February, China has provided vaccine aid to 53 developing countries and has exported and is exporting vaccines to 22 countries, according to Chinese official media reports.
From Southeast Asia to Southeastern Europe to Latin America, Chinese vaccines have reaped positive press coverage wherever they have gone, with senior local officials often going to the airport to greet them. Never one to hide his desire for vaccines, Serbian President Vucic told the media after receiving a Chinese vaccine that “getting a vaccine at the moment is more difficult than getting a nuclear weapon.”
A big push for vaccine diplomacy
China denies that it is engaging in “vaccine diplomacy”. Chinese President Xi Jinping said that China will use its own vaccines for global public welfare initiatives. In an opinion piece, Xinhua, the Chinese official media, wrote, “China has never sought any geopolitical goals in promoting anti-vaccine cooperation, has no economic interests at stake, and has never attached any political conditions.”
But for Vuk Vuksanovic, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, it is appropriate to characterize China’s policy on vaccines in terms of “vaccine diplomacy,” a continuation of China’s “mask diplomacy” that aims to The goal is to portray China as a responsible actor.
The policy, he says, “is designed to repair the reputational damage done to China by the early Epidemic, increase China’s political influence with individual countries, build China’s global soft power capital, and attempt to win a share of the global vaccination market in competition with Western and Russian vaccine manufacturers.”
Indeed, China has explicitly linked its vaccine exports to regional strategic goals. With foreign investment in the Belt and Road project stymied year after year, China’s latest “health Silk Road” has become a key component of the initiative, and domestic health officials have publicly called for prioritizing access to vaccines for Belt and Road countries.
Daniel Aldrich, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, told Voice of America, “China is not providing vaccines to South Korea, Japan or other neighboring countries; instead, the focus is on projecting its soft power into developing countries, hoping to build a good reputation and network of allies in those countries that will help it in forums such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization on international disputes.”
China has used the occasion of summits with Middle Eastern, Latin American and African countries to promote opportunities for trade and investment there in exchange for priority vaccinations. Mexico’s Deputy Foreign Minister Martha Delgad, for one, said in a recent interview that China’s assistance will long be remembered.
Karthik Nachiappan, a researcher at the National University of Singapore, told the Voice of America, “Countries that receive (China’s) Sinopharm and Kexin Bio are indebted to Beijing and will likely be expected to advance Chinese interests on important issues such as 5G.”
Meanwhile, China is seeking international recognition for its vaccines, boosting the global prestige of its medical products. The International Olympic Committee announced last week that it would provide Chinese vaccines to participants in the Tokyo Summer Olympics and the Beijing Winter Olympics, but Japan has refused to give Chinese vaccines to its athletes. China continued to announce vaccine donations to UN peacekeepers on Monday.
Prior to the new coronavirus epidemic, Chinese pharmaceutical companies were rarely qualified to supply medical products to international agencies. in 2019, China accounted for just 1.9 percent of total medical products procured by the United Nations, compared with 21.9 percent for India.
To expand the reach of domestically produced vaccines, the Chinese government also plans to ease restrictions on the entry of foreigners who have received the new crown vaccine. The problem, however, is that only those who have received the Chinese vaccine must qualify.
Nicholas Thomas, an assistant professor of public health at City University of Hong Kong, told Voice of America, “This incentive is clearly aimed at the business community and a way that China can help ensure that its vaccines remain the preferred choice, which clearly shows how much these efforts are focused on diplomacy rather than providing a medical public good. “
More Countries Join Vaccine Distribution
Chinese vaccines enjoy an export advantage in large part because of the lack of competition from Western countries. Recently, the United States, India, Australia and Japan agreed at the Quadripartite talks (QUAD) to provide 1 billion doses of a vaccine developed by U.S. Johnson & Johnson to much of Asia by the end of 2022 in response to China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
“Now with the QUAD agreement, that dominance is no longer guaranteed,” Downings said. “What choice will the regional population make between a Chinese vaccine and a Johnson & Johnson vaccine. That choice will be a clear indication of the level of trust that the people of the region, not just their governments, have in the Chinese program.”
From a technical standpoint, both the Chinese Kexin Bio and U.S. Johnson & Johnson vaccines can be stored at normal refrigerator temperatures, solving the problem of limited transportation and storage conditions in many developing countries. In addition, the Chinese vaccine requires two doses, while the Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one, with the latter being able to immunize the target population more quickly.
In January, British market research firm YouGov surveyed about 19,000 people in 17 countries and regions and found that Chinese-made vaccines were generally not well regarded, scoring just above last-place Iran.
The efficiency of Chinese vaccines has long been under suspicion, especially since China has been the scene of other vaccine scandals. Clinical trial data on the safety and efficacy of Chinese vaccines are less transparent than those of other new vaccine candidates, and no Chinese vaccine has yet been officially licensed for use by a WHO-certified “strict regulatory authority” (SRA).
Brazil’s Instituto Butantan, which is a partner of Coxin Biologics, released data in January showing that the overall effectiveness of Coxin Biologics’ vaccine was 50.4 percent, a figure barely above the WHO threshold of 50 percent effectiveness for vaccines. Sinopharm said the effectiveness of the company’s vaccine was 79 percent.
Krishna Udayakumar, founder and director of the Center for Global Health Innovation at Duke University, told Voice of America, “Public data on efficacy and safety, as well as more rigorous regulatory scrutiny, are critical to building confidence in these vaccines globally.”
He also questioned whether China’s vaccine production capacity could meet both its domestic demand and its foreign export ambitions.
This gap that may have emerged explains why China has made commitments to multiple countries, but has only provided extremely limited doses to each. Officials in countries such as Turkey and Brazil have publicly complained that Chinese companies have been slow to ship vaccines and raw materials.
China’s goal is to vaccinate 40 percent of its domestic population with the new crown vaccine by the end of July, and according to official Chinese data, China currently has a vaccination rate of 3.56 per 100 people, well below the levels of Israel, the UAE and the United States.
In fact, long before the four-nation summit, many countries had realized that China would not provide a free lunch and began seeking to diversify their vaccine supply. In Vietnam, which has a territorial dispute with China, the country has chosen to import vaccines in bulk from countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia, despite Beijing’s aggressive vaccine diplomacy there.
The four members of the quartet are countries that see evidence of China’s aggressive expansion and revisionism,” said Professor Aldridge. This effort by the Quartet to curb the influence of China’s soft power will certainly produce more vaccines for the world.”
In addition, the Covax Global Program, a joint effort of the World Health Organization and two other vaccine promotion groups, began distributing vaccines last month with a goal of distributing at least 2 billion doses by the end of the year. The program will cover most poor and middle-income countries, which is also expected to alleviate the vaccine woes in those countries.
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