Can India outshine China with Covid-19 vaccine diplomacy?

India is donating millions of AstraZeneca shots to countries including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Mauritius

New Delhi says 92 nations including Cambodia, a close ally of Beijing, are interested in vaccines produced by the Serum Institute of India

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Boxes of Covid-19 vaccines sent from India arrive in Dhaka on January 21. Photo: AP

Published: 12:05pm, 26 Jan 2021Updated: 3:51pm, 26 Jan 2021

As India last week announced it would send its neighbours 10 to 20 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines for free, a headline splashed on the Republic, a nationalist and right-wing television channel: “Some Spread Disease, Some Offer Cure”.

It was a reference to the first reports of Covid-19 emerging from the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019 and how more than a year later, New Delhi is using its position as one of the world’s top producers of drugs to match Beijing’s offer of doses to developing countries as a “global public good”.

India’s Serum Institute, the world’s largest producer of vaccines, is producing millions of doses of the shot developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca. Shipments of free doses under the Vaccine Maitri programme have begun arriving in the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Mauritius and the Seychelles, while Sri Lanka is next in line for the free shots, branded as Covishield, on January 27, and Cambodia will receive doses next month.

Meanwhile, China has offered free Covid-19 vaccines to Myanmar and the Philippines, and while Bangladesh was supposed to get 110,000 doses of vaccine free from Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech, Dhaka’s refusal to contribute to the vaccine’s development cost led to a deadlock. Authorities in Nepal are still assessing Sinovac’s CoronaVac and have yet to approve its use.

The situation has fuelled a narrative within India of it making headway in a pushback against years of China expanding its influence in the region. The more nationalistic among India’s media outlets – for which China-bashing has been the flavour of the season as the nuclear-armed neighbours are locked in an ongoing military face-off on their Himalayan border – have played up India’s vaccine diplomacy.

When China’s nationalist tabloid Global Times last week suggested Indian drug makers would not be able to fulfil New Delhi’s vaccine diplomacy ambitions, The Times of India, a more centrist publication, ran a piece headlined “China starts smear campaign against India’s vaccine diplomacy”.

To former Indian diplomat Sarvajit Chakrabarty, the headlines “reflect a no-holds barred competition for influence between the two Asian giants”.

“Many Indians see the vaccine as a big opportunity to curb China’s growing influence in South Asia,” said Chakrabarty, who served in the Indian foreign service for 30 years, including as deputy high commissioner and ambassador in several countries, and is now attached to the Kolkata-based think tank CENERS-K.

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