Vaccine diplomacy
[9] Australia promised to ensure early access to a vaccine "for countries in our Pacific family, as well as regional partners in Southeast Asia".
China's infection rates and early success in handling the COVID-19 pandemic were sufficiently low that it could send vaccines abroad without domestic objections.
[12]: 199 As academic Suisheng Zhao writes, "Just by showing up and helping plug the colossal gaps in the global supply, China gained ground.
[13] However, because most of Chinese distributed vaccines have gone to such middle-income countries, many of the poorest countries are left highly vulnerable, undercutting China's attempts to present itself as a benevolent giver of needed goods and undermining Xi's claim that a Chinese developed vaccine would be treated as a “global public good.
While on the other hand, these actions have demonstrated that China is a pragmatic, self-driven problem solver, willing to establish alliances with other nations contrasting the United States' isolationist policies.
[59] Although China gained some international sympathy, the country was also accosted by “accusations of fanning the pandemic by silencing early reports” and “dogged by international criticisms that trace the origins of the pandemic to a leak from a Wuhan lab.”[60] A 2020 Pew Research poll further suggests a negative narrative surround China; upon polling citizens in 14 economically advanced nations, including East Asian neighbors Japan and South Korea, a median of 61% said China did "a bad job dealing with the [COVID-19] outbreak" and 78% said they had no confidence in President Xi.
[61] Such a poor global perception could suggest that China's distributed vaccines as a means of repairing or strengthening the country's international image.
Through distributing their vaccines, China clearly took a stride to appear favorable in the eyes of the world, and perhaps reverse the criticism garnered at the early stages of the pandemic.
[63] India sent millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine to 95 countries including neighboring Bhutan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and the Maldives.
[70] In July 2020, Japan agreed to provide 11.6 billion yen (US$109 million) to five countries along the Mekong River: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam over concerns with China's influence on vaccine production and distribution in Asia.
[76] The United States offered vaccine development to Indonesia in an August 2020 phone call between Mike Pompeo and Retno Marsudi.
