China and Russia using vaccines to gain influence

China and Russia are using their locally produced COVID-19 vaccines to grow their international power by giving doses to desperate countries in order to have more political influence over them, experts say.

Benjamin Gedan, deputy director of the Latin America program at the Wilson Center in Washington, called the practice “vaccine diplomacy,” noting that it happens when countries seek to grow their international prestige by distributing vaccines to nations that need them.

He said authoritarian governments, including those in China and Russia, have taken the lead in vaccine diplomacy. “It’s never encouraging to see the world’s largest dictatorships taking most advantage of this diplomatic opportunity,” Gedan said.

The China National Pharmaceutical Group Corp., Sinopharm, is producing two COVID-19 vaccines while Sinovac, a Beijing-based biopharmaceutical company, is making a third one.

Gedan said while China had offered bilateral loans of

$1 billion US in Latin America, it refused to give COVID-19 vaccines to Paraguay, which recognizes Taiwan diplomatically. “There have been reports from the foreign minister of Paraguay that intermediaries of the Chinese government explicitly said that Paraguay will not access the Chinese vaccine unless it changes its position on Taiwan,” he said.

There have been reports that Brazil could not access Chinese vaccines without committing to allow Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from accessing its 5G wireless network auction, Gedan said.

Lynette Ong, an associate political science professor at the University of Toronto, said China has donated or sold its COVID-19 vaccine to almost all southeast Asian countries. “It usually comes with some sort of strings attached,” she said.

Aurel Braun, a Russian foreign policy professor at the University of Toronto, said Russia has been pushing particular political agendas and integrating vaccine diplomacy as a much more significant element of its foreign policy than China.

“China is much wealthier, has a far larger economy than Russia. It is able to provide all kinds of other economic benefits,” he said.

“[For Russia,] the Sputnik V [vaccine] is a much more important tool, and they have been especially focusing in certain parts of Europe or where leaders have been more sympathetic to Mr. Putin’s policy, like Viktor Orban in Hungary or in Slovakia.”

Jillian Kohler, a pharmacy and public health professor at the University of Toronto, said China and Russia saw an opportunity in the lack of COVID-19 vaccine supply, and they are taking advantage of that to further their political goals. She said: “Countries are turning to Russia and China because they’re desperate, so when you do that you’re in a position of weakness, and . . . that might mean at some point that you’re going to have to compensate for that.”