The rivalry between the US and China for global hegemony was intensified long before the arrival of Covid-19. But the pandemic has become a new political arena in which this conflict is being played out.
In Latin America, the impression that prevailed for a long time was that China’s mask diplomacy, the availability of its vaccines and the rapid recovery of its economy in 2020 would shift the balance of power to the detriment of the United States.
Few analysts would have disputed the Economist Intelligence Unit’s April 2021 view that China had gained a clear advantage in vaccine diplomacy over the US in Latin America.
As of mid-May 2021, China had exported over 250 million doses (42% of its total production), of which around 165 million went to Latin America. The Chinese government has been very skillful in marketing its vaccines and publicly organizing their deliveries. Although only a small part was donated, the perception of public opinion was very positive from the beginning.
China has benefited from the US leadership vacuum. Until June 2021, the US was not a major player in vaccine diplomacy. Only when the national vaccination campaign was well under way did the US begin to export and even donate vaccines from its accumulated surplus.
From a Chinese perspective, the playing field for vaccine diplomacy in Latin America changed significantly in the second half of 2021, as the US and Europe began to make more vaccines available to the rest of the world.
According to the WTO and IMF vaccine trade monitoring, using vaccine fill and finish as an indicator, the EU had a larger share (38.1%) of the global vaccine trade against Covid-19 in 2021 than China (35.9%) and the United States (13%).
The EU exported 62.6% of its production and the US 51.2% (with a strong increase in December). In contrast, China, due to domestic demand, exported only 31.5% of its production.
In the case of South America, however, China is still the main supplier, both in sales and in donations, but the EU has regained ground. With the double weight of single-dose vaccines (J&J and CanSino), by the end of December, China had supplied 36.4% of doses from South America, the EU 29.8%, the US 5.6% and Russia, 4.4%.
Looking ahead, the picture looks different again with European and American companies dominating the market.
According to the Americas Society/Council of the Americas vaccine tracker, as of December 31, 2021 there were 1.172 billion doses of AstraZeneca, J&J, Pfizer-BioNTech, Novavax, Vaxxinty and Moderna, 433 million doses of Chinese vaccines (CanSino, Sinopharm, Sinovac) and 82 million doses of Russian vaccines (Sputnik) contracted, both guaranteed and optional, by Latin American governments.
While China likes to portray itself as a great benefactor, it should be noted that the majority of vaccine doses shipped to Latin America were sold, not distributed.
The United States clearly outperforms China in vaccine donations. According to estimates based on various databases (PAHO, US Department of State, Duke Global Health Innovation Center), by the end of 2021 the US had shipped 53 million doses to Latin America for free, EU countries 11.5 million _Spain contributed 9 million_ and China only 5 million.
How successful has China been with its vaccine diplomacy?
It is necessary to distinguish, on the one hand, the extent to which China avoided a loss of reputation and, on the other hand, gained sympathy. China appears to have managed to avoid an image crisis at the beginning of the pandemic.
China launched an assertive information policy through its embassies in Latin America to repudiate criticism of its handling of the pandemic and build a positive narrative.
Data from the Americas 2021 Barometer from the Latin America Public Opinion Project suggest that China has had little success in turning mask diplomacy and the delivery of medical supplies and vaccines into a win-win in Latin America.
In contrast, after a dramatic decline during the Trump presidency, confidence in the US government recovered under Biden and almost returned to Obama-era levels. While in 2018/19 only 39% of Latin Americans surveyed trusted the US government, the proportion increased to 57% in 2021.
On the other hand, trust in the Chinese government dropped from 47% to 38%. In the vast majority of Latin American countries, with the exception of Haiti and Peru, there is greater trust in the United States than in the Chinese government.
The pandemic was a great opportunity for China to reduce Taiwan’s influence in Latin America. Before the start of the pandemic, nine of the 15 sovereign states that had full diplomatic relations with Taiwan were in Latin America and the Caribbean.
With the advent of the pandemic, the Chinese government has relied on medical protection teams and, later, vaccines to convince these countries. But Beijing has not been very successful in its efforts to weaken Taiwan in the region. No country has turned away from Taiwan in exchange for Chinese masks and vaccines.
In the case of Paraguay, the only South American country that still maintains official relations with Taiwan, China has not been successful. Neither did it in the case of Honduras. This would have been a great success for China.
The only country to sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan during the pandemic was Nicaragua, which recently announced its decision. Although symbolically a Chinese plane with a donation of 200,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccine landed at Managua airport on December 27, Nicaragua’s decision was not motivated by China’s vaccine diplomacy, but by the growing international isolation of the Ortega regime and the increasing pressure and new US sanctions.
Furthermore, the number of vaccine doses donated by China was modest compared to donations from Spain (1.7 million doses) and France (827,000 doses) in 2021.
By the second year of the pandemic, China had undoubtedly gained ground in Latin America over the United States. However, this had only a limited geopolitical impact and did not lead to a general increase in sympathy for China in Latin America. The US can still respond to the Chinese challenge and has regained ground with the Biden administration and its own vaccine diplomacy.
Source: Folha
