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Coronavirus vaccine
OpinionComment
James Borton
James Borton

Opinion | Western vaccine nationalism is opening the door for China to lead the global recovery

  • While the West has every reason to feel the end of the pandemic is in sight, things look bleaker for many other parts of the planet
  • If viable alternatives to Western vaccines emerge, rich countries could find China has usurped the mantle of vaccine leadership

Reading Time:4 minutes
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Illustration: Craig Stephens
James Borton

In spite of pleas for global solidarity in vaccine production and distribution, the global vaccine roll-out is quickly turning into a race between two models of vaccine diplomacy.

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On one hand, pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Moderna are making record profits while jealously guarding intellectual property rights over the mRNA vaccines which have been critical to the United States and Europe’s swift vaccine roll-out. Meanwhile, lower-income countries are forced to rely on other types of inoculations.

As a result, while the West has every reason to feel that the end of the pandemic is in sight, things look bleaker for many other parts of the planet. The US alone accounts for nearly 20 per cent of the nearly 1.4 billion jabs given worldwide so far. Meanwhile, Africa’s three most populous countries – Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt, home to more than 400 million people between them – each account for just 0.1 per cent.

Developing countries are understandably seeking ways to bridge that gap. One source of hope has come from Chinese vaccine manufacturers who are collaborating with partners in the developing world to produce and distribute vaccines to countries in need. They received a major boost from the World Health Organization’s decision to greenlight China’s Sinopharm vaccine.

As the first non-Western vaccine approved for worldwide use by the global health body, the decision put Sinopharm’s jab – already used in countries from the Middle East to Latin America – on equal footing with Western counterparts and a step ahead of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

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With partnership agreements in the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, and Indonesia ensuring locally manufactured Sinopharm can be distributed across the developing world, Chinese vaccines could supplant Western competitors as “workhorses” of the global inoculation effort, even as China’s level of transparency around its vaccines falls short of the mark.
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