Vaccine exports lift brands’ presence
Experiences accumulated from the development and export of COVID-19 vaccines will help bolster the presence of Chinese pharmaceutical, biotech and medical product companies on the world arena, business leaders and analysts said.
“The export of our COVID-19 vaccines helped us gain international recognition and credibility, which in turn contributed to the export of the company’s other vaccine-related products,” said Pearson Liu, director of brand management and public relations at Sinovac Biotech Ltd.
For example, since 2009, Sinovac has been promoting the clinical trials and registration of its inactivated vaccine against hepatitis A in South Korea. On Dec 29, the vaccine was approved by the local medical products administration, he said.
Currently, apart from the COVID19 vaccine and hepatitis-A vaccine, Sinovac owns Enterovirus Type 71 vaccine, which prevents hand-footmouth disease, combined hepatitis-A and B vaccine, H5N1 influenza vaccine, among others.
“Through our experience of COVID-19 vaccine export, other vaccines developed by the company are expected to gain global acceptance and be exported to the outside world to help those in need,” Liu said.
Feng Duojia, president of the China Association for Vaccines, said China’s exports of self-developed COVID-19 vaccines fully deliver on its commitment to global community on making the vaccines a public good, and have provided substantial support to global prevention and control of the disease through proactive actions. Such actions are fully in conformity with its vision to build a global community of nations with a shared future for mankind.
He also said China is strengthening vaccine regulation to ensure quality and boost vaccine exports.
China now owns four vaccines that have passed the World Health Organization’s assessment to get on its list of prequalified vaccines used by the United Nations and other agencies to decide which vaccine to purchase.
Currently, 20 Chinese vaccines have applied or plan to apply for the WHO prequalification process, and the multilateral agency is expected to conduct a new round of high-level assessment of China’s vaccine regulation in 2021, Feng said.
Chen Qiulin, deputy director of the Health Industry Development Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said exporting COVID-19 vaccines will help the Chinese companies concerned to accumulate valuable experience in, and deeper understanding of, global markets and international best practices.
Besides, Chinese vaccine producers can also burnish their global image and gain better customer recognition, he said.
Li Shanshan, a healthcare columnist at news website Zaker, said that in the process of going global, Chinese vaccine-makers will have more chances to study international markets and will gain experiences to export their vaccines. The industry has reached a new stage of development, she said.
One of the major challenges for Chinese vaccine manufacturers going global is to find acceptance overseas, Liu said.
“The fact that our COVID-19 vaccine received emergency use approval from countries like Brazil, Chile, Turkey and Indonesia can serve as a reference for other countries and regions. For instance, Brazil’s federal drug regulator Anvisa’s authorization would promote the vaccine’s approval in other South American countries,” he said.
Agreed Yin Weidong, chairman and CEO of Sinovac. “We hope our vaccine can protect more people around the world.”
However, Chen warned that as COVID-19 vaccines are at the focus of worldwide attention, Chinese producers must be very careful at every step of the process involving production, storage and transportation, to ensure top quality of their products.
Jinsongbei community in Beijing’s Chaoyang district was once a shabby and messy area — but thanks to the city government’s efforts to revamp such neighborhoods, the community has been given a new lease on life.
Built in the 1970s, Jinsongbei community had become dirty and disorderly, lacking property management and modern facilities. In 2018, the local government launched a renovation project to enhance its living environment and strengthen community services.
Authorities started the project with infrastructure, working with a real estate company to install elevators and increase parking spaces.
According to residents’ demands, the community park was improved by planting more trees, building canopies and laying running tracks.
A deserted bungalow became home to a community supermarket, while an old bicycle shed was transformed into a service station.
At the community center, elderly residents take part in various cultural activities and courses to entertain and enrich their lives. They can also enjoy home-care services provided by the property manager, such as housekeeping and help with bathing.
Jinsongbei’s clean environment, advanced facilities and multiple services have become a shining example of community transformation, local officials said.
More than just Jinsongbei, Beijing has carried out 433 community renovation projects since 2017, involving 511 communities and 3,646 buildings.
Zhang Guowei, deputy director of the Beijing Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said the city regarded the renovation of old residential communities as key to improving people’s well-being and promoting the city’s sustainable development.
Local officials convened several meetings with residents to learn about their needs and drew up reconstruction plans based on them, Zhang said.
Last year, 61 projects were completed, benefiting 35,000 households. Collectively, the residents’ satisfaction rate reached 90 percent, according to a government survey.
A renovation project must attach equal importance to the construction of infrastructure and property management, said Feng Keliang, deputy director of the commission.
It is necessary for refurbished communities to form a property supervision mechanism, so that achievements in renovation can be maintained, Feng added.
According to data from Feng, property management services have covered all the communities. Of them, 416 have established a property management committee or a house-owner commission.
Besides communities, the city has also ramped up efforts to replace substandard housing.
With a combined investment of 200 billion yuan ($30.91 billion), some 150,000 houses in poor communities were revamped by the end of 2020, exceeding the original target by 30 percent.
This year, Beijing plans to work on 3,995 households in poor communities to refurbish their residences and 300 community renovation projects are scheduled to start.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), the capital will strive to complete all renovation projects of communities built before 2000, according to the city government.
HONG KONG — More than 20 years ago, on the night Hong Kong was returned to the motherland and no longer under British rule, Ma Chi-sing, a civil servant, did not feel much difference in his heart. His life remained unchanged and so did his work. He and his colleagues continued to use paper with a crown printed on it, and everything seemed to be the same as before.
“When I became a civil servant, I was told to be loyal to the British queen,” Ma says. “Back then, I didn’t have the concept of China as my country. Hong Kong returned to the motherland in 1997, but many of us didn’t have a sense of returning at that time.”
Ma joined Hong Kong’s Water Supplies Department in 1992. Before that, he studied at a Catholic middle school and majored in civil engineering at Hong Kong Polytechnic. Like his schoolmates, Ma did not know much about Chinese history after the Opium War. “We weren’t taught the subject at school and no one at home talked about it,” he says. “People only cared about their incomes.”
Ma’s ancestral home is in Huiyang, Guangdong province. In his memories of visiting his grandmother in his early years, the hometown was nothing wonderful or special to him. “I remember we went across the Lo Wu checkpoint (to enter the mainland). The other side was bleak. The bridge linked two totally different worlds,” he says.
Ma’s change of heart came after he joined the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions. He began to read about Chinese history, visit the mainland more often, exchange ideas with other people, and learned more about the country.
“I used to believe the ‘China Collapse’ theory, which was widely reported in newspapers in Hong Kong and the West. But 10 years passed, then 20 and our country has become better and better,” Ma says. “It was that fact — the national development — which changed me.”
Ma has made countless trips to the mainland in recent years, and almost every time he was surprised by its rapid development.
During a trip to the mountainous Guizhou province in 2018, he was awed by the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, or FAST, the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope. He also found that the local ethnic people in Guizhou were leading a good life, unlike what he had seen reported elsewhere. “I could see the happiness from their smiles,” he says.
After the long journey of building a sense of national identity, Ma did not hesitate in proffering his signature, swearing to uphold the Basic Law and pledging allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government. “I was very glad to see the document,” he says.
In fact, Ma had repeatedly appealed to the HKSAR government that Hong Kong’s civil servants should confirm their love of the country and Hong Kong through the taking of an oath or signing of a document.
Ma stresses the necessity of the move, as he still clearly remembers the unprecedented chaos in Hong Kong in 2019 and was saddened at the involvement of some civil servants. Some were even arrested for participating in violent incidents.
He believes the requirement to take the oath was only the first step of a greater mission of improving the national concept of civil servants.
He suggests that the HKSAR government promotes exchanges between the mainland and Hong Kong’s civil servants and encourages more civil servants to see with their own eyes the development of the country. “Seeing is believing,” he says.