Brazil’s coronavirus vaccine squabble another fight over US, China influence

Local argument over the country’s vaccination strategy is really another front in Beijing and Washington’s tug of war

President Jair Bolsonaro’s cancellation of CoronaVac deal coincided with high-level economic delegation from US

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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro last week cancelled a deal to buy Chinese company Sinovac’s Covid-19 vaccine. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:00pm, 28 Oct 2020Updated: 1:05pm, 25 Nov 2020

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro killed a deal last week to buy a potential Covid-19 vaccine being developed by China, provoking a dispute with state governors and contradicting his own health ministry. While the argument may seem local, it is really another front in the US-China tug of war for global influence.

Bolsonaro cancelled the contract on October 21, just two days after Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello agreed to purchase 46 million doses of CoronaVac, being developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech. “The Brazilian people will not be anyone’s guinea pig … Hence, I have decided not to purchase this vaccine,” Bolsonaro wrote in a Facebook post.

This all happened the same week Bolsonaro met visiting US national security adviser Robert O’Brien, who was “accompanied by the largest economic-focused, high-level delegation from the US government in decades”, according to a statement by the US embassy in Brazil.

The US delegation committed to investments in Brazil worth US$2 billion, according to the embassy, and this – along with Bolsonaro’s ideological ties to the Donald Trump administration – resulted in policy decisions that “lacked strategy”, according to Livia Machado Costa, a former researcher in international relations at Peking University and now senior editor at Shumian, a website focused on China analysis for a Latin American audience.

“[Brazil] is pursuing an automatic alignment with the United States, you see it in the question of vaccines, it’s not a coincidence,” she said.

Bolsonaro used the meeting with the US delegation to express support for Trump’s re-election campaign, according to local media. That, along with his rejection of Sinovac, sent all the signals the current US administration wanted to hear, said Lucas Padilha, head of strategy at Brazilian think tank Observa China.