China’s disastrous zero covid policy has resulted in numerous concerning protests emerging within the country. The Chinese Communist Party’s lack of concern in safeguarding its citizens from the lethal covid-virus, is a testimony to the governments failure in securing safe vaccines for its population.
China’s independently manufactured vaccines have proven ineffective against the fatal outbreak that has gripped the country since the past couple of years. The CCP’s inability to free up restrictions is a direct result of the same, where the outbreak has been unmanage in terms of containment. Chinese authorities in the initial phases of the pandemic rejected scientifically developed vaccines from world-class manufacturers such as Moderna and Pfizer. This decision has now come to haunt not only the political leadership of the country but has also proved more deadly to its general public.
More so, while global vaccine manufactures were producing vaccines in record numbers, China was running delegitimizing propagandas against the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines. Its locally manufactured vaccines such as Sinovac and Sinopharm have proved to be quite ineffective against the virus, resulting in frequent outbreaks within the country as well as in nations that procured Chinese vaccines for its populations.
Sinovac’s effectiveness was proven to be much lesser against its global competitors when it was revealed that it fared at only 50% protectiveness as compared to mRNA vaccines manufactured by other countries at 90% efficiency.
Although there is no official public data released by Chinese authorities on the efficiency of their vaccines against other covid variants, studies conducted by prominent research centres have declared that China’s vaccines offer 20% less protection against the Delta variant.
A study conducted by the Lancet, concluded that Sinovac produced weaker T-cell responses, which protects people against the severe illness when variant evolve. The ineffectiveness of the T-cells and its inability to neutralise antibodies was a direct result to the failure of the government in containing outbreaks across the country.
More recent studies have indicated that Chinese vaccines such as Sinovac have only been effective up to 61% against deaths and 55% against hospitalization, while vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer fared much better at 90% protection from both. This has also led to widespread concern within local populations across China leading many to refuse taking vaccines due to its ineffectiveness. This factor combined by the failed attempts by the Chinese authorities in vaccinating the population has led to millions of its population without adequate protection and thus the enforcement of the draconian zero-covid policy.
A far more consequential effect however, has been faced by countries that accepted China’s ineffective vaccines. Turkey for instance, was amongst the first countries to purchase China’s CoronaVac, manufactured by Sinovac Biotech. The local acceptance of Chinese vaccines was minimal mostly due to lack of trust in China’s research as well as the general atmosphere of suspicion regarding China’s suppression of the spread of the virus in the first place. Moreover, disputed results on the effectiveness of Chinese vaccines were seen to be quite telling of the data manipulation that China had indulged into during the initial phases of the launch of its vaccines.
Indonesia declared in December 2020, that the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccines it had received was quite high at around 97%. However, given the global standards, the Indonesian government had to revise the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccines to a disappointing 65% by January 2021. In Brazil, another country that received chines vaccines in huge quantities, declared that the Sinovac trail results stood at 78%, yet again similar to Indonesia, Brazilian authorities had to revise its results to a staggering 50.4% in terms of the vaccines effectiveness.
The enormous number of revising data results cemented what was only seen as suspicion previously – China had deliberately fudged its vaccines effectiveness results for the purpose of selling it to foreign partners.
Countries like Thailand and Indonesia, after reoccurring outbreaks post the vaccination of its population with Chinese vaccines, declared that they were revising domestic vaccines policies; where instead of using two Sinovac shots, residents would be provided with AstraZeneca alternatives. As far as its healthcare workers were concerned, both the countries were now offering to immunise them with Moderna booster jabs, as hundreds of them had been on the receiving end of the fatal virus even after being completely vaccinated with China’s Sinovac. Malaysia, another one of China’s vaccine importers has since then also declared that it would be switching to Pfizer vaccines soon.
Let alone its ability to convert its vaccines as a soft power tactics, China’s vaccines failed to even provide adequate protection to the population against the virus that led to the loss of lives across the world.
China’s dented image post the outbreak of the pandemic in 2019, has fared even worse in its attempt to convince nations and the public that it was leading a stronger fight against the virus. More so, this failure has also had a detrimental impact on the lives of millions who trusted China’s guarantee that its vaccines fared better than those from other manufacturers. Reoccurring explosive outbreak across China as well as other countries that bought or received Chinese manufactured vaccines has been a direct testimony to the CCP’s failure in safeguarding the lives of billions across the world. China’s propagation as a global leader has turned out to based on its malicious attempt of covering up the CCP’s failure in procuring safe and effective vaccines but also one that has enforced its hegemonic nature across the world.