China’s ‘Health Silk Road’ is one of the offshoots of the BRI or the ‘New Silk Road’, which has gained increasing currency in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic. Part of this new dynamic is the so-called Chinese ‘vaccine diplomacy’. A Chatham House report sheds light on this new type of diplomacy in the global South particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region [Beijing’s Vaccine Diplomacy Goes Beyond Political Rivalry]. The report covers Western media’s coverage of the topic of Chinese vaccine diplomacy in the MENA region as highly politicized in the backdrop of the overall Western skepticism about the rise of China in the region. In reality, numerous countries in the region have willingly participated in the trial phases of Chinese vaccines and/or have bought those vaccines (including some rich Gulf countries such as UAE).
The report contends that China’s vaccine diplomacy in the region is part of its ‘broader strategy to cast itself as a global health leader’. It also wants to improve the initially negative impression that China left due to its lack of transparency during the outbreak of the virus. Through this new diplomacy in the region, China aims to be viewed as ‘a responsible, scientific leader capable of fighting the pandemic both domestically and globally’. Perhaps the most important aspect of this new dynamic in the region is that from the perspective of many MENA countries, especially those that are suffering from economic hardships, China’s vaccines come as a life-saver while ‘Western states have selfishly hoarded vaccines at the expense of developing countries’, the report concludes. In this new dynamic China is portraying itself as a global health leader (at least in the Global South and for developing countries), boosting its diplomatic (and by extension economic) ties along the BRI geography.
Mamad Forough
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