Beijing Trapped?

Beijing’s vaccine diplomacy targeting Taiwan is effective and sophisticated, but Beijing assumed that the United States and Japan would not intervene. Once the United States and Japan sent the vaccines to Taiwan, Beijing was caught in a dilemma of its own making. If China now donates vaccines to Taiwan, it will look as if China is merely following in the footsteps of Japan and the United States. If China does not send vaccines to Taiwan, it will not only legitimize the current Taiwanese administration’s “anti-China” policy, but also cause other countries to suspect that Chinese vaccine assistance, contrary to Beijing’s rhetoric of altruism, is politically driven. Nor is this a one-round game. Further vaccine donations from the United States and Japan would intensify the predicament that China faces.

It remains important to not discount the importance of humanitarian concerns driving vaccine donation drives. But even if vaccine distribution is done without considering its strategic implications, its distribution might nonetheless still have political repercussions that states must consider. Vaccine diplomacy is not insulated from realpolitik.

The authors would like to thank Nirav Mehta (Swarthmore ‘20) for his excellent research assistance. The opinions expressed are solely their own.

Koji Sugimoto is the Chief Correspondent for the Japanese Prime Minister’s office and Senior Political Staff Writer for Sankei Shimbun, one of Japan’s most influential newspapers. He is a former associate of the Harvard Program on U.S.-Japan Relations.

Dr. George Yin is a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College. Formerly, he was a fellow at Atlantic Council and Dartmouth. He will join National Taiwan University (NTU) in the fall.

Image: Reuters.