Vaccine Diplomacy: China’s hidden agenda in Latin America
Image courtesy of BBC Mundo
By Molly Mawson
Access to coronavirus vaccines has been inequitable from the get-go: who gets the vaccine, and when, is as much a question of geography and privilege as it is of age and vulnerability. Amidst a vaccine shortage, growing cases of the virus, and a crumbling health care system, Paraguay has become entangled in an insidious new phenomenon: vaccine diplomacy.
What is vaccine diplomacy?
While rich Western nations have been criticised for stockpiling vaccines in the early stages of the vaccine rollout, nations such as China and Russia have instead been accused of engaging in vaccine diplomacy: offering doses of domestically-made vaccines in exchange for self-advantaging diplomatic relations. Three of China’s homemade vaccines - Sinovac, CanSino, and Sinopharm – have been administered extensively across Latin America, except in the four regional nations (out of just 15 worldwide) that have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan over China: Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, and Nicaragua. Alongside Venezuela, these same countries just happen to be by far the least vaccinated nations across the region. Is there a correlation? Almost certainly. And a recent China-Paraguay deal shows why. While Paraguay grappled with one of the world’s highest per capita death tolls – hitting a rolling 7-day average of 17.02 deaths per million on 18 June (for comparison, the same-day average was 9.59 for Brazil, 1.87 for India, and 0.15 for the UK) – China stepped in with an offer: cut ties with Taiwan and receive Chinese-made vaccines. The deal forced Paraguayans to call into question the lengths they would go to to protect the decades old allyship with the Chinese-claimed island nation of Taiwan.
Why is Paraguay allied with Taiwan over China?
Taiwanese relations in Latin America have their roots in the shared anti-communist orientation of certain governments – mostly concentrated in Central America – during the 1970s and 1980s. While many authoritarian Latin American powers were establishing longstanding ties with China, Paraguay and several Central American and Caribbean nations opted to maintain relations with the Chinese-claimed nation of Taiwan. Nevertheless, opportunities for greater investment and trade deals with the world’s second largest economic power enticed several countries to seek diplomatic realignment. In 2017, Panama formerly switched diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China, with then-president Juan Carlos Varela stating that it was “the correct path for [the] country.” The following year, both the Dominican Republic and El Salvador followed suit, with then president of El Salvador, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, saying: “the switch will bring great benefit to the country.” With Latin American nations seemingly severing ties one by one, Taiwan was left questioning whether its historic allyship with Paraguay was coming to an end.
While some academics have long considered Paraguay a nation likely to withdraw support for Taiwan due to the lack of economic opportunity in the alliance, others have said that Taipei-Asunción relations have been as strong as ever, even in the face of dwindling Latin American support. The latter view holds that the allyship is reciprocal and mutually beneficial: Paraguay advocates Taiwanese recognition and its participation in international organisations, while Taiwan offers the poor, landlocked nation unique international status, as well as material benefits such as humanitarian aid. While it had seemed that the alliance was steady as ever, the arrival of the deadly pandemic prompted a wave of pro-Chinese rhetoric, culminating in a tense senate vote. In April 2020, the leftist-bloc of the Paraguayan Senate pushed for immediate diplomatic realignment, arguing that Beijing would be a far better ally in the face of the pandemic. On the 20th of April, however, the bill was defeated 25 to 17. Despite the win, critics were quick to warn that the issue was not settled, and that pressure on Taiwanese support was steadily increasing. Fast forward to the beginning of 2021, and it is safe to say such predictions were correct.
Image courtesy of South China Morning Post
What did China’s vaccine deal look like? And what was it hoping to achieve?
In March – amidst a climate of sharply increasing cases – reports began emerging that brokers representing China were approaching Paraguay with a simple deal: cut ties with Taiwan and receive batches of Chinese-made vaccines. The foreign ministry responded to the reports with a mixture of disbelief and disgust, saying that they “had serious doubts about the authenticity of such brokers” and that, either way, the vaccine was “an essential universal good, to which all countries must have access” and not something to be leveraged to “satisfy petty sectoral interests, manipulate or force specific actions on the parts of States, (…) or to pursue political or economic gain.” Nevertheless, just a month later, Paraguay was evidently more open to the idea, signing a deal with Sinopharm via the UAE’s G42 company for 1 million vaccines. The deal saw Paraguay pay for and receive 250,000 doses of the Chinese-made vaccine, as well as placing a down payment of 5 million USD for the remaining 750,000 vaccines. But Paraguay would never see those urgently-needed vaccines. Seven short weeks later, on 2 August, Sinopharm killed the deal, refunded the down payment, and recalled the remaining vaccines. While the specifics of what happened in the intervening 6 weeks are not known, Paraguay’s health minister Julio Borba has said that the “reasons are completely geopolitical,” prompting critics to point to Paraguay’s refusal to sever ties with Taiwan as the likely cause.
China’s use of life-saving vaccines as a bargaining chip in diplomatic games underscores its desire to control the region. A working paper published by the International Monetary Fund in June stressed China’s hidden agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean; maintaining that China’s growing investment in the region is likely linked to wider geopolitical interests, as opposed to simple commercial interests. Similarly, a report into swelling Chinese influence in the region found that China’s huge investments – which focus on ports, roads, dams and railways – offer clear political returns: the growing diplomatic realignment of Taiwanese-supporting countries allows Beijing to gain influence in the UN and other multinational institutions; they are also able to embed US-sanctioned technology companies such as Huawei, ZTE, and Dahua into regional infrastructure, which they predict will allow Beijing to dictate rules of commerce for the next century. Ultimately, only time will tell the damage Beijing’s vaccine diplomacy will inflict on the country, but early signs suggest that the damage could be extensive.
What lies ahead for Paraguay in the aftermath of the failed deal?
With a population of just 7 million, the loss of 1 million vaccines sours Paraguayan hopes of a speedy vaccine rollout. As of 13 August, just 4% of the population has been fully vaccinated, which falls well below the regional average: Bolivia has fully vaccinated 17.4% of its population; the DR, 41.1%; El Salvador, 49.6%; Chile, 68.1%; and Uruguay, 69%. Paraguay’s dire lack of inoculations extends to its Taiwan-supporting regional neighbours: only 5.1% of Nicaraguans are fully vaccinated, as are 2.9% of Guatemalans and 5.4% of Hondurans. The alarming regional inequity of vaccine distribution – in this case based on sectarian political grievances – serves as yet another reminder of what WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described back in January as “the wall of inequality between the world’s haves and have-nots.” To remedy the situation, Western powers will have to pull together to relieve the deficit caused by the lack of Chinese-made vaccines circulating in Taiwan-supporting Latin American nations.
While initiatives such as COVAX – the multi-national scheme working towards global equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines – work in theory, the allocation of doses across Latin America has made little to no sense. Despite Paraguay’s heavy death-toll, the scheme has allocated just 304,800 doses to the struggling country, just over half of which it has actually received. Meanwhile, Argentina was quick to receive all 1,944,000 of its allocated doses back in March 2021, meaning it has now secured or optioned enough doses to vaccinate 124% of its population; Bolivia has received 1,582,653 doses through the scheme and is now able to inoculate 196.9% of its population; and the DR has received 91,200 of its 463,200 allocated doses and is able to vaccinate 131.4% of its population. Paraguay and its Taiwan-supporting regional neighbours once again fall behind on this measure: Paraguay has secured or optioned enough vaccines to inoculate just 30.5% of its population; Guatemala, 21.9%; and Honduras, 49.7%. The LAC region has long been considered one of the region’s worst affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, both in terms of infection and death rates, and regarding the impact to its economy. If the continuing damage provoked by the disease is to be relieved at an equal level across the region, the powers behind the COVAX scheme must recognise the disability incurred on Latin America’s Taiwan-supporting nations, and act quickly to donate far more of its controversially stockpiled doses to LAC’s most neglected and politically-isolated nations.
Molly Mawson has recently graduated from the University of Bristol with a degree in Spanish and Portuguese. She continues to write freelance pieces related to Latin America while living and working in Yucatán, Mexico.