The race is on to find a vaccine for COVID-19. The geopolitical dividends for the country that first develops an effective one will be huge.
There are more than 100 vaccines in preclinical development. Russia has approved one, and was to start using it next month, although it has since postponed this until November or December. A vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford in England looks promising.
Taiwan has two candidates, by Adimmune and Medigen, both in phase 1 trials. Adimmune expects to begin a phase 2 trial in December, although it is to continue monitoring participants for a year after that phase ends. Only one US candidate, being developed by Moderna, is in phase 3 trials. In China, CanSino Biologics, Sinopharm (Beijing), Sinopharm (Wuhan) and Sinovac are conducting phase 3 trials. The CanSino vaccine has already been approved for use within the Chinese military, and the company is already in talks with several countries to obtain emergency approval for its use.
Vaccine development involves university departments, pharmaceutical companies and national governments. Taiwan has significant resources at its disposal, but by no means as many as the US, especially with the US government’s “Operation Warp Speed” initiative, or China, where state-owned enterprises account for 40 percent of the vaccine industry.
While the need for a vaccine is pressing, rushing the process is problematic. Nevertheless, there is a considerable incentive to get one into circulation as soon as possible.
It would be naive to think that a successful vaccine would be made available throughout the world, certainly not in the first instance. In addition to the considerable logistical challenges of manufacturing, storing and distributing huge quantities in deliverable formats, politics will play a decisive role.
US President Donald Trump has already said that a US-developed vaccine would be used to inoculate all US citizens before it is made available abroad, while Beijing stands to gain a huge advantage by choosing who to sell to.
China could use the vaccine as a bargaining chip in its trade dispute with the US. The optics of supplying poorer countries in Africa and Latin America, many of which are signed up to the Belt and Road Initiative, would go a long way in rehabilitating China’s image as a reliable, responsible member of the international community, and help address its own culpability in the initial spread of the coronavirus.
Beijing knows the importance of such messaging. Think of its “mask diplomacy” to hard-hit European countries in the first wave of the pandemic. Providing select countries with the only effective vaccine would be mask diplomacy on steroids. What better way, too, to convince the UK and EU to overturn a ban on Huawei’s 5G technologies, despite US insistence?
China could refuse to sell not only to the US — assuming the US Food and Drug Administration or US Congress would approve the use of a “Chinese vaccine” — but also to those aligned with Washington against Beijing.
What compromises would China place on President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) if it were to offer the vaccine to Taiwan? Would it be politically possible for her to refuse?
This would be an opportunity for China to claim that it was providing the vaccine to its “own people,” which would cohere with its claims that Taiwan is a part of Chinese territory.
It would also do much to steady its flailing attempts to win hearts and minds in Taiwan, and to reiterate the potential advantages of aligning with a rising superpower, and turning away from the US and the West.
The expectation has to be that Taiwan will not be the first to develop a vaccine. There is no guarantee that the US will win the race. The government must be prepared for the political impact of China gaining control of this potent weapon.
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