China to beef up provision of Covid-19 jabs

BEIJING. – China is set to beef up its role as a provider of global public goods, including Covid-19 vaccines and its response to climate change, amid the rapid worldwide spread of the Delta variant and growing calls for global coordinated action in the face of multiple challenges, analysts said.

Meanwhile, the nation now has both the capacity and the willingness to provide more quality public goods that the world now urgently needs, they said.

China has acted on its promise to make its Covid-19 vaccines global public goods, having supplied 750 million vaccines to other nations as of August.

President Xi Jinping has renewed the commitment in a speech delivered at the first meeting of the international forum on COVID-19 vaccine cooperation, announcing that the nation will provide 2 billion doses of vaccines globally this year, in addition to making a US$100 million donation to the COVAX global vaccine initiative.

Huang Tianlei, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think tank in the United States, said COVID-19 vaccine distribution needs to be made equal in order to bring the pandemic to an end, “as no one can truly be safe until everyone is safe”.

Huang said the Covid-19 crisis occurs at a time of rising nationalism around the globe where beggar-thy-neighbour policies, such as vaccine nationalism and export restrictions on medical supplies, adopted by many governments, have resulted in a great shortage the supply of global public goods.

“Obviously, Covid-19 vaccines are among the most important global public goods the world urgently needs now. But Covid-19vaccines are still in short supply in many developing countries,” said Huang.

He noted that China can play a more active role in improving the COVAX initiative, aside from what China has already been doing in terms of providing greater vaccine access.

“Improving the COVAX initiative and providing the developing world with greater access to effective vaccines can probably be a first step for China to forge a new global norm around vaccine distribution across the globe,” he said.

Last month, China unveiled a US$3 billion aid package to facilitate the pandemic response and economic recovery of developing nations.

Xu Xiujun, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of World Economics and Politics, said China’s provision of global public goods has been multidimensional, covering aspects such as materials, visions and mechanisms, with developing nations being the focus. – ChinaDaily.