QUAD (US, Japan, India and Australia) was regarded as a strategic bloc to contain China. However, the recent virtual meeting between President Biden and Prime Ministers Suga, Modhi and Morrison ,whilst highlighting the provision vaccines to the region was really about curbing Chinese vaccine successes- an expression of soft power.
One outcome of the QUAD was US funding the manufacture of Johnson and Johnson vaccines by India and Japan with minor logistic help by Australia which was probably money already committed. In addition to countering China’s diplomatic success with vaccines, the aim of the meeting also seems designed to thwart the World Health Organisation and over 100 developing countries who are seeking to override the monopoly intellectual properties in vaccines held by Big Pharma including Johnson and Johnson.
All members of QUAD had already signed up for the WHO Covax scheme which was designed to distribute Covid vaccines to all countries. China had signed up. Indeed when Prime Minister Morrison and Foreign Minister Payne first announced their proposal for inspections of China (at the behest of Donald Trump) they received negative responses from Macron, Merkel and Johnson, and others who were concerned that this would seriously complicate their efforts with the WHO already underway to create Covax and with the Chinese locked in. Their concern was to try and mitigate vaccine nationalism. Trump refused to join because, encouraged by Big Pharma, he wanted to monopolise the vaccine market , first for US domestic needs, but then for international leverage, presumably against China. Biden quickly reversed that and announced a substantial contribution to Covax.
In the meantime, vaccine nationalism took off as vaccine. This left most of the world unable to get supplies and the Chinese and Russians rapidly filled the void. The Diplomat of March 3 2021 described the Chinese response:
“China’s vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: it has pledged roughly half a billion doses of its vaccine to more than 45 countries, according to a country-by-country tally by the Associated Press. With just four of China’s many vaccine makers able to produce at least 2.6 billion doses this year, a large part of the world’s population will end up inoculated not with fancy Western vaccines boasting headline-grabbing efficacy rates, but with China’s humble traditionally-made shots. It’s a potential face-saving coup for China which has been determined to transform itself from an object of mistrust over its initial mishandling of the Covid-19 outbreak to a saviour. … China has largely capitalised on slower than hoped-for deliveries by US and European vaccine makers. “
https://thediplomat.com/2021/03/chinese-vaccines-sweep-much-of-the-world-despite-concerns/
Vaccine supplies have quickly become very influential soft-power weapons. Mexico is a stark case. Denied US vaccines, Mexico has rushed into Chinese vaccines, as has most of Latin America. The Quad provided vaccines will be arriving very late and well after the Chinese’ vaccines that are now being distributed.
Actions by wealthy countries, including Australia, in the WHO have thwarted the production of vaccines for poorer countries. Oxfam International on 10 March 2021 described this as follows:
“Rich nations are vaccinating one person every second, while the majority of the poorest nations are yet to give a single dose. The US, UK, the EU [and Australia] are blocking proposals at the WTO to help poorer countries get vaccines more quickly. … Many of the rich nations are blocking a proposal by 100 developing countries to be discussed at the WTO which would override the monopolies held by pharmaceutical companies and allow an urgently needed scale-up in the production of safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines to ensure poorer countries get access to the doses they desperately need.”
The Washington Post of March 6 2021 described the situation as follows:
“In recent days (the Director General) of the WTO has made a pointed plea for the waiver of some patents … for Corona Virus vaccines and medical supplies. The 164-member WTO is deadlocked over a proposal to do so put forward by India and South Africa on behalf of countries with little or no vaccine doses. The idea has been roundly opposed by the US and largely other Western countries, where major pharmaceutical companies are based.”
The QUAD meeting looks very much like an attempt to disguise Big Pharma’s destructive influence and to combat the dramatic success of China (and Russia) in the distribution of vaccines.
Vaccine nationalism is alive and well with wealthy countries, including Australia, being obstructive in the WHO in opposing the waiver on vaccine patents in the present emergency which would enable the scaling up of production in many poorer countries around the world.
The ‘new’ Quad is largely window dressing.
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Comments
10 responses to “QUAD: A public relations exercise to disguise Big Pharma’s obstruction and to combat Chinese vaccine successes”
Mainstream Western commentary persists in cynically portraying China’s efforts to help vaccinate the world as “vaccine diplomacy”. This reflects “essentialist thinking”, that China is incapable of having goals that are not self-regarding.
And no wonder, the Quad seems shameless in using vaccine to counter Chinese goodwill, or at least that is how the mainstream Western commentary seems to portray this. Is there no shame among Western diplomats? When will they learn that not everyone is as self-regarding as the US & Australia appear to be?
Let me acknowledge that it is rare indeed for any country to act contrary to their own self-interest. But that doesn’t mean that a country like China cannot be motivated by other-regarding goals as well as self-regarding goals. These goals are often complementary.
I have no problems believing that it is in China’s own self-interest to help vaccinate the world as soon as possible, while also believing that one of China’s goals is to help make the world a better place, especially for those who are most vulnerable.
Every vaccination is an experiment. I never met my uncle Jacky McGuinness. He died supposedly because of cross contamination when vaccinated for TB.
It normally takes years to test a vaccine. SARS has been through all the weapon laboratories in the world. Augmentation has been tried. Vaccines have been in development for some time.
Selling CoVid as a pandemic seems successful now, but in retrospect, questions will be asked. In the meantime, the money flows out of the fraud system continue. How convenient …
Sure, let’s make vaccines into a political game as we give them to women and old people.
The ‘initial handling’ canard is dead. A recent parper, authored by 34 CDC researchers, found Covid-19 was endemic in the USA by December, 2019, agreeing with findings in Italy and France.
Tests of Red Cross blood samples taken in the US from December 13 last year revealed high levels of antibodies nationwide for the Covid-19 virus. Serologic testing of U.S. blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies: December 2019-January 2020. Sridhar V Basavaraju, MD, et al.
Last week, working independently, the WHO and the CDC eliminated China as a source of Covid-19.
I have been following the time line of the outbreak in China since it first began, and while I can see some delay in the early stages, it is a delay measured in days, easily explained away by the various unknowns in what was a new situation, and nothing like the delay in the west after the WHO declared a state of emergency at the end of January. To suggest that China is engaged in vaccine diplomacy in order to counter western criticism of its early handling of the crisis in Wuhan, is an assumption I can find no grounds to support.
It was the hubris and utter failure by the US and Europe that made it a lot worse than it needed to be.
It was China that had to deal with all the uncertainty in the beginning. It would not be unfair to say that in fact some in the West were not unhappy that China looked like it was in real trouble. Some even expressed satisfaction! Wilbur Ross was happy that, as a result, jobs would go back to the US!! https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51276323
It was China that provided the world with the genome sequencing on the 11th January. When China locked down 60 million people around Wuhan, the entire West pointed their ‘human rights’ finger at China.
Instead of the hubris, and the assured self-satisfaction, Western countries, and in particular the US and the UK should have woken up and prepared their countries to face the virus.
Tiny New Zealand learnt China’s lessons very quickly indeed. Come down hard, come down fast! The rest is history. Would be wonderful if we can have Saint Jacinda for a year instead of the not-so-funny joker that we have in Canberra 🙂
Within the context of the “utter failure by the US and Europe”, it’s worth noting that Sergey Lavrov visited a number of ME states/nations last week.
One of those states was the UAE. Within a couple of days, out came the joint announcement – the UAE will play a significant funding role in the building of a facility in Serbia, a facility that will produce vaccines, specifically Russian and Chinese vaccines. The Russians and Chinese will ensure the building of the facility, and its supply chain, will be fast tracked – target date for production is mid year.
Serbia currently has the highest vaccine penetration rate in Europe, which has been made possible because Serbia is not a member of the EU, and has been supplied with both Russian and Chinese vaccines.
And, earlier last week, an Italian subsidiary of a Swiss pharma company signed an agreement to produce Russia’s Sputnik V in Italy.
These are desperate times for Western Big Pharma. In sporting commentary parlance, ‘they are having their pants pulled down’.
Were it not so dangerous, it would be funny…
What do you expect the Western MSM to say? We f.cked up, China’s got it right? That would invalidate all the lies they were peddling in the past 40 years. Gotta keep moving forward!
ASEAN leaders’ understanding of the Quad is more profound and deeper than our Australian leaders because they worried about the effect on their 640 million inhabitants and their ability to become the world’s No 4 economy by 2030. This goal can only succeed if they trade freely with China, Sth Korea and Japan. The concept of QUAD and its agenda is military alliance, and it could bring war to their shores if they get involved. Countering this madness, is the sanity of RCEP which Australia signed but not India.
The ASEAN mindset, influenced by Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani of Singapore, is the ability to remain friends with the US and at the same time trade with China. War does not bring prosperity to any country and in the case of China-Vietnam war, the two sides have the wisdom to stop the conflict and the most heavily armed border between them have turned into vibrant trading towns. Sanctions and bombing do not work anymore and is now replaced by diplomatic dialogue, non-interference and free trading.
Sadly, our leaders took a different view and get involved in using vaccino-politics as a para-military tool to contain China along with the US. It was Henry Kissinger who said that the present Cold War 2 with China lacks planning and they dived in and continued regardless.
Hence, in the eyes of the ASEAN countries, Australia’s moral leadership will decline with the US. These days, cheque book diplomacy is more superior than gunboat diplomacy and Chinese will succeed in Indonesia.
Quad is a comparatively new alliance .. it looks like the bigger kids in Asian school yard have gotten together to form an exclusive twinkle twinkle chamber .. the other smaller kids appear to wait at the side lines .. actually they are not waiting, but watching closely. Whether cracks in the vase spread to the base or if the actors can actually dance to the same tune of Stephen Foster, it seems that “vaccine shot diplomacy” become latest component of the cold war. The light weights back themselves into a corner, where light is dim, to see the oncoming traffic