China juggles vaccine diplomacy drive with demand for Covid-19 doses at home

Name: China-made coronavirus vaccines widely distributed despite efficacy concerns
Uploaded: 2021-03-04T12:00:19.000Z
Duration: 3 min 5 s
Description: China-made coronavirus vaccines widely distributed despite efficacy concerns

The country has made exports of vaccines a priority, in the form of donations and commercial deals

But the focus may shift to upping the pace of inoculation domestically, with under 4 per cent of its people having had a jab

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Brunei has been among the recipients of the more than half a billion Chinese vaccine doses pledged to governments overseas. Photo: Xinhua

Simone McCarthy

Published: 8:00pm, 4 Mar 2021Updated: 9:41pm, 4 Mar 2021

As poorer countries struggle to get access to Covid-19 vaccines, some of the earliest jabs to arrive in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America have been free and supplied by China. The question is whether Beijing can keep exporting doses when it has hundreds of millions of its own people to vaccinate.

Flights carrying donated vaccines from China have touched down in Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, Iraq, Pakistan, Cambodia and Laos, among others, in recent weeks as Beijing has sought to back up a promise that Chinese vaccines would be a “global public good”.

Critics have pegged the donations as more an effort to win diplomatic points and future business opportunities than vaccine aid, a characterisation flatly rejected by the Chinese government. Regardless of motive, China has made export of doses a priority, with countries receiving shipments of donations typically ranging from 50,000 to 600,000 jabs.

That is in addition to tens of millions of ready-made doses and raw materials already shipped overseas via commercial deals with Chinese vaccine makers.

03:05

China-made coronavirus vaccines widely distributed despite efficacy concerns

Now, the focus may be shifting as China appears set to ramp up vaccinations at home. The country’s leading respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan this week said China aimed to vaccinate 40 per cent of its 1.4 billion population by the end of July, according to a Reuters report.