The west should pay attention to Russia and China’s vaccine diplomacy

Since the start of the pandemic, China and Russia have used medical supplies to pursue foreign policy gains. Both sent masks and protective gear to hard-hit countries last spring. Now they are promising their vaccines — with some success.

With richer nations grabbing the bulk of the authorised shots from western companies, low to middle-income countries from Brazil and Nigeria to Algeria and Egypt are looking to Moscow and Beijing for doses. Chinese vaccines are finding buyers in Latin America and the Middle East. Vaccines from state-owned Sinopharm are distributed in the United Arab Emirates and the Balkans. Sinovac received orders from Turkey and Brazil, while the single-shot CanSino vaccine is undergoing phase-three trials in countries including Pakistan and Mexico.

China’s whole state apparatus is behind the drive. Beijing, which has delivery contracts with two dozen countries, sprang into action through the co-operation channels of its Belt and Road Initiative. “Health was one of the many subtopics of the BRI. With the pandemic, it has become the main focus,” says Moritz Rudolf of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Russia, meanwhile, claims it has received orders for 1.2bn doses of its two-shot Sputnik V, which a peer review of trials in The Lancet declared safe and effective. It has secured emergency-use approval in countries including Argentina, Mexico and Belarus. On Tuesday, Iran started mass vaccination by giving a Sputnik V dose to the son of its health minister.

The foreign policy goals are wide ranging. Beijing is trying to counter allegations it covered up the early spread of the disease. It is also linking its vaccine effort to the prospect of future investments — in energy or technology, for instance — and as a lender to poorer nations, to sovereign debt cancellation. It may leverage the added goodwill when allies are needed on issues such as territorial disputes, says Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

For Moscow, vaccine diplomacy has the side benefit of causing trouble in the EU, which is grappling with vaccine delivery delays and a slow immunisation drive — last week Russia delivered jabs to Hungary, even though Sputnik V is yet to secure EU authorisation. As Russian relations with the EU and the US deteriorated in the wake of opposition activist Alexei Navalny’s jail sentence, the Lancet endorsement boosted Moscow’s global standing, observes Theresa Fallon, director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies think-tank. “It is a card Vladimir Putin can play to move from the narrative held by some in the international community that Russia is a pariah state after the annexation of Crimea, to a more positive narrative of a vaccine provider and ‘liberator’ from the pandemic,” she says.

China and Russia’s programmes contrast with slower multilateral efforts: the World Health Organization’s vaccine procurement initiative, Covax, has hardly begun to deliver shots to poorer nations. This is “a little bit humiliating”, French president Emmanuel Macron told the Atlantic Council last week. But short-term embarrassment, he said, was worth it to ensure vaccines were reviewed to the highest standards.

But if Sputnik V has acquired some scientific recognition, there is little transparency on Chinese vaccines’ efficacy. “What we know with relative certainty is that they don’t kill anyone,” says François Heisbourg of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Scaling up production will also be key to the commercial deployment, especially as Russia and China will also need to immunise their own populations.

Vaccine diplomacy is facing some pushback. Taiwan banned Chinese imports, while Ukraine is refusing Sputnik V. India, a big pharmaceutical manufacturing hub, has sought to counter China’s efforts by sending free AstraZeneca/Oxford jabs to its neighbours.

The west is barely noticing the vaccine war under its nose. China’s strategy is “more successful than is recognised in Europe,” says Rudolf. Despite some personal protective equipment sent out by China being found faulty in the first phase of the pandemic, Beijing has made a lasting impression by being the first provider of aid to many countries outside the EU, in particular in some of the poorest African nations. The US, meanwhile, should pay attention to Chinese and Russian forays in Latin America and the Middle East. This is another reason why — beyond the humanitarian, economic and scientific ones — the west must deliver on the promise of swift deliveries of cheap or free jabs via Covax.

anne-sylvaine.chassany@ft.com