Corona Pandemic taught us several lessons. The most important is the hypocrisy of the US led western nations objecting to liberal export policy of COVAX and the sincerity of China in accepting it and promptly supplying antidote to the entire globe.
As Covid-19 was raging, “the governments of India and South Africa, with the support of 62 WHO member states, proposed a TRIPS Agreement waiver proposal that would temporarily waive intellectual property rights protections for technologies needed to prevent, contain, or treat COVID-19, including vaccines and vaccine-related technologies”. (Read) The world Health Organization is yet to finalize the modus operandi for this COVAX operation.
The main stumbling block is the objections raised by high-income countries including some European Union members, UK, Japan, Canada, and Australia even though more than 100 low-income countries gave their thumbs up for this proposal. What gave us most consternation was the initial enthusiasm shown by both German chancellor Angela Merkel & US President Joe Biden frittering away amid strong campaign against it, by pharma mafia of both US & Europe.
To counter the India – South Africa proposal European Union hypocritically came with a Draft Declaration that seeks to avoid the TRIPS waiver altogether and give prominence to the mantra of pharma mafia such as relieving imbalance of vax production by moving production facilities to developing nations to increase manufacturing capacity there, as well as to supply vax at an affordable cost. By the same token, pharma companies located in the west are encouraged to grant limited approvals for the manufacture of vax without impinging on their intellectual property rights.
China, on the other hand did not waste time. It understands Covid pandemic is not only a health issue but a geoeconomics power play. China believes that saving of millions of global population from the throes of death & devastation caused by the pandemic is noble priority for Chinese Nation as directed by Chinese culture & traditions.
Therefore, going ahead on the production drive she proportioned part of it for domestic use and sizeable part for export mainly intended to the low-income countries that were severely affected by the pandemic. By end march 2021 China exported about 300 million dose of Vax which ranked 45% of the total global export. Saying it another way this amounted to 1/6th of global output too.
By end July 2021, china has supplied 700 million vax doses to countries in the Afro-Asian region. This figure is expected to go up as additional supply of 100 million vax doses roll out by year-end. Meantime, plans are afoot for production and supply of 3 billion vax doses to the entire globe for the years 2022 till 2024. By that time the entire global population would have been vaxed hopefully.
What is significant is China supplying vax diplomacy in two ways: one is as an outright grant; equally important is the balance that is supplied at fairly lower prices compared to the West. Unlike the west making fuss about intellectual property rights (IPR) China is willing for establishing joint venture in importing countries where production takes place without any IPR restrictions. Recent agreement initialled with Thailand to manufacture Sinovac vaccine there, shows how China is taking up vaccine diplomacy in its stride. In equal measure geoeconomics too!
Cheers!
Muthu Ashraff Rajulu
Business Strategist
Mobile: + 94 777 265677
E-mail: cosmicgems@gmail.com
Blog: Business Strategist
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