Helen ROXBURGH -
As wealthy countries scramble to buy up the limited supply of big-name coronavirus vaccines, China is stepping in to offer its homegrown jabs to poorer countries. But the largesse is not entirely altruistic, with Beijing hoping for a long-term diplomatic return.
The strategy carries multiple possible benefits: deflecting anger and criticism over China’s early handling of the pandemic, raising the profile of its biotech firms, and both strengthening and extending influence in Asia and beyond.
“There is no doubt China is practising vaccine diplomacy in an effort to repair its tarnished image,” Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), said.
“It has also become a tool to increase China’s global influence and iron out... geopolitical issues.”
Stung by criticism of its handling of the emergence of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China has made much of its own ability to get its own outbreak under control, with media carrying pictures of life-as-normal at pool parties and sporting events.
In the early months of the pandemic, Beijing hurried to export millions of masks and gowns, and sent medical teams to help strained healthcare systems in Europe and Africa.
Now, with major Western pharmaceutical companies beginning to bring their vaccines to market, China is rolling out its own versions — signing agreements to supply millions of doses, including to countries that have a sometimes-prickly relationship with Beijing.
Chinese diplomats have inked deals with Malaysia and the Philippines, both of which have previously complained about Beijing’s ambitions in the South China Sea.
In August, Premier Li Keqiang promised priority vaccine access to countries along the Mekong river, where a devastating drought has been worsened by Chinese dams built upstream.
The move by President Xi Jinping to offer up a Chinese vaccine worldwide as a “public good” also allows Beijing to paint itself as a leader in global health, said the CFR’s Huang, seizing a mantle left untended as the US retreated under Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine.
Washington is notably absent from a global alliance of 189 countries that have pledged to distribute vaccines equitably. Beijing signed up in October as its drugmakers launched final stage trials.
But this programme has only secured enough doses to cover 20 per cent of the population of low- and middle-income countries by the end of next year — offering a commercial opportunity.
China is ramping up production facilities to make one billion coronavirus shots next year — and, having largely tamed the outbreak at home, it will have a surplus to sell.
HEALTH SILK ROAD
If China can capture just 15 per cent of the market in middle and low-income countries, it would net around $2.8 billion in sales, according to an estimate by Essence Securities, a Hong Kong-based brokerage firm. — AFP
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