India beats China with vaccine diplomacy

India takes vaccine diplomacy equally seriously. On Wednesday in Parliament, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said the country’s “Friendship for Vaccines” program has “elevated India’s position and generated good international will”.

Giving or exporting medical supplies allows Beijing and New Delhi to burn their soft power, showcase their technological skills, support their companies in new markets, and brag to the national public that they are the major players on the world stage. With Western nations preoccupied with inoculating their own populations, the Asian giants clash to make the most of the opportunity.

Leaders from Sri Lanka and Dominica personally received shipments of Indian-made vaccines at the airport and the Mongolian prime minister fired a shot made in India. Chinese vaccines have inoculated Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Indonesian Joko Widodo and the president of the Seychelles. In Europe, Chinese vaccines have been established in Serbia, Hungary, Northern Macedonia and Montenegro.

India’s massive pharmaceutical industry accounts for approximately 20% of the world’s generic drugs and more than 60% of the world’s vaccine production. A Foreign Ministry website lists 72 countries that have received about 60 million doses of Covid vaccines manufactured in India. A private company, Serum Institute of India, along with Maryland-based Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca and Novavax, has pledged 1.1 billion doses to Covax, the World Health Organization-led effort to supply vaccines in the poorest countries in the world.

According to official statistics, widely discussed by experts, Beijing has done a much better job than New Delhi in containing the pandemic at home: only about 5,000 Chinese citizens have died, compared to about 160,000 Indians. It is difficult to find independently verified figures, but Chinese leadership in vaccine diplomacy is much lower, if at all. According to a recent trial in Foreign Affairs by Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert from the Foreign Relations Council, so far Chinese companies have received orders of approximately 572 million doses and promised another 10 million to Covax. The Chinese Foreign Ministry says it plans to provide free vaccines to 69 countries and sell them to 28 other countries.

Last week, New Delhi’s Quad partners – a loose group from the US, Japan, Australia and India – stepped in to turbo-power India’s efforts. At a virtual summit, the first to feature leaders from the four countries, the Quad pledged to supply at least a billion doses of vaccines, including one developed by Johnson & Johnson,

in the Indo-Pacific nations by the end of next year. The United States, Japan and Australia will fund the production and delivery of the vaccines by a private Indian company, Biological E. Australia will use its experience in regional logistics to deliver them.

Grouping their strengths makes sense for Quad countries, and the vaccination initiative should reassure critics who see the group as little more than a talk shop. The focus on Southeast Asia backs down directly against Beijing’s efforts to dominate the region. But both the new initiative and the success of New Delhi’s vaccine diplomacy offer a broader lesson for India. He is much more likely to achieve his goals by working closely with Western democracies than by embarking on a quixotic pursuit of “self-confidence.”

In a context of growing nationalism, the Modi government has portrayed its vaccination effort as part of a successful search to create a “self-sufficient India”. It rushed through the emergency approval of a domestic vaccine developed by an Indian pharmacist, Bharat Biotech, although it has not yet completed phase 3 trials. On March 1, a nurse administered the vaccine. india not yet proved to Mr. Modi.

In reality, India’s vaccination skill comes from collaboration, not self-sufficiency. Take Serum Institute, the company that provides India with much of the muscle against the Covid vaccine by pumping 2.5 million doses a day of the AstraZeneca vaccine and collaborating with other Western companies, including Novovax. The “Made in India” vaccine was developed by AstraZeneca in collaboration with Oxford University and with the financial assistance of the US Serum Institute risked starting the manufacture of the AstraZeneca vaccine before it became clear that it would be approved by the WHO. , the United Kingdom or India. (U.S. regulators have yet to approve it.) But that risk was underwritten in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which promised to offset potential losses.

To date, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved by the WHO and well received in many countries. Chinese vaccines, criticized for lack of data transparency and, in some cases, for a low efficacy rate, lack this international primer. If Indian-made Covid vaccines are well received worldwide, it is partly because they are backed by the transparency and rigor of Western medicine. Funding from Western NGOs often increases their attractiveness.

India’s ambition to develop self-produced vaccines comes to nothing. But, as the country’s own experience shows, India does better when it is open and collaborative, and needs a little help from its Western friends.