With five approved COVID-19 vaccines, China aims to give shots to 40% of its population in the next four months, while also delivering huge amounts of doses to Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico.
One billion doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be produced in India and distributed to Southeast Asian countries, with the help of the U.S., Japan, and Australia. The initiative, an output of the informal “Quad” alliance, is an attempt to counter Chinese vaccine diplomacy in the region.
According to a new Gallup poll, 79% of Americans now have an unfavorable view of China — more than right after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Pew, meanwhile, found that nine-in-ten Americans see China as a competitor or enemy.
“We’re at a point now where technology and policy are reinforcing each other, so we have a lot more reason to be optimistic about green finance and climate probably than any other time in the past fifteen or twenty years,” says Damien Ma, Director of the Paulson Institute’s think tank.
On the same day that U.S. regulators cleared the way for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to become the country's third approved COVID-19 shot, two more Chinese companies applied for public rollouts of their vaccines in China.
Chinese vaccines against COVID-19 are providing low- and middle-income countries with solutions in a time of need. They have helped fill a void left by Europe and the U.S.
Apart from strongman politics, China’s logistical networks — ultra-fast, thoroughly diffused, and widely trusted — helped a nation weather lockdown during COVID-19.
WHO scientists had arguments in Wuhan over access to detailed patient data. But they appear to disagree about whether those debates amount to a “refusal” by China to share information essential to tracing the origin of COVID-19.
The WHO went to Wuhan, and Beijing is happy.