The German government has zealously helped Taiwan to negotiate with COVID-19 vaccine supplier BioNTech SE, but wrapping up a deal depends on the two signatories, the German Institute Taipei said yesterday, as vaccine procurement disputes continue to roil the nation.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) on Thursday last week told a news briefing in Taipei that a government deal to acquire 5 million doses of the BioNTech vaccine fell through due to political reasons.
“We have noticed the recent controversy about vaccine acquisition,” German Institute Taipei Director-General Thomas Prinz said in a Chinese-language post on Facebook yesterday.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
“Please trust us — the German government, especially German Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy Peter Altmaier, expended a great deal of effort to assist continuous negotiations between Taiwan and BioNTech,” Prinz said.
In January, Reuters reported that Altmaier had previously written to his Taiwanese counterpart, Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花), about recruiting Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) to find a solution to a global shortage of automotive chips.
“However, whether the [vaccine] contract could be inked and what conditions it contained were not controlled by the [German] government, but depended on the two signatories,” Prinz said.
If the two parties could reach a consensus, the German government would certainly welcome the outcome, he said.
Germany is the second-biggest donor to the COVAX global vaccine-sharing program, which has provided Taiwan with 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, he added.
Prinz said he hoped that Taiwan would receive enough doses of various vaccines, including from BioNTech, and that Taiwanese would continue to line up to be vaccinated even after domestic cases decline, which would leave the nation in a better position than before the recent outbreak.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration has been reluctant to acquire vaccine doses through BioNTech’s Chinese representative, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group (上海復星醫藥集團).
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) on Tuesday urged the DPP to stop politicizing vaccine procurement, saying that it is ready to help Taiwan.
“We are highly concerned about the lives, health and welfare of Taiwanese,” TAO spokesman Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光) said in a statement.
BioNTech has authorized Fosun Pharma to be its exclusive distributor in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and China, Ma said.
“We are actively assisting Taiwan in its negotiation with Fosun Pharma,” he added.
The COVID-19 vaccine developed by China National Pharmaceutical Group Corp (Sinopharm, 中國醫藥集團) obtained emergency use authorization from the WHO, Ma said.
“We are willing to make arrangements for Taiwanese to administer Chinese vaccines as soon as possible,” he said.
Asked to comment on Japan’s plan to donate doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Taiwan, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin (汪文斌) on Monday said that Japan cannot even ensure a sufficient vaccine supply for its own people.
Some agencies in Taiwan have said they are willing to accept vaccines donated by China, but the DPP turns a blind eye to China’s good intentions and puts up barriers to Chinese vaccine imports, Wang said.
In Taipei yesterday, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) said that the Chinese foreign ministry and the TAO have been making false statements, trying to sow discord in Taiwanese society and meddle with its vaccine procurement.
The government is doing its best to push vaccine suppliers to deliver ordered doses soon, Ou said, calling on the Chinese government to stop manipulating the issue for political purposes.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS