RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The health situation in Paraguay is dramatic. The exponential increase of infections, collapsed hospitals, 33 percent of health workers ill, and cases of corruption in the purchase of supplies for the pandemic forced the departure of almost half of the cabinet.
Also, in the last hours, it became known that an oxygen plant that cost the Paraguayan state US$4 billion to be installed in the National Hospital of Itauguá has been stopped.
Read: Desperate Paraguay cries out to the world, asking for help with Covid-19 vaccines
In the context of accumulating emergencies, the priority is the provision of vaccines. The government of Abdo Benítez received the first batch of Sputnik, after an unusual error which delayed the arrival of the doses of the Covax system, while it is waiting for 2 million of the Indian Covaxin, which will allow it to get closer to immunizing at least 30 percent of the population.
In the midst of this urgency, China’s offer appeared, which opened a heated debate within the Paraguayan political system since Paraguay is one of the 15 countries that does not recognize the Asian giant and has diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Nauru, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines are some of the countries that share Paraguay’s position. This situation prevents Mercosur from signing a free trade agreement with the Asian power.
In this sense, the Chamber of Deputies rejected the opposition’s proposal to urge the Executive to establish diplomatic and consular relations with China and thus take advantage of its vaccines.
The proposal of the Liberal Party did not prosper due to the majority of seats of the ruling right-wing Colorado Party, which stands firm in defense of the historical position.
Liberal deputy Celeste Amarilla insisted in the debate not only on an agreement that would include vaccines but also on China’s economic power and the advantages for Paraguay to penetrate that market with its meat exports.
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“The fact that China buys only one line of our economy, such as meat, will mean a before and an after; the whole Paraguayan production does not cover the needs of a province,” said Amarilla, quoted in a press release of the Chamber of Deputies, which also stated that “the fastest growing economy in the world in the last decades and is considered as the locomotive of a great part of the international economy.”
For their part, the Colorado Party’s deputies defended the historical alliance with Taiwan and their solidarity with Paraguay in relation to the cooperation projects of the island in the South American country. “If there is a generous and supportive people committed to Paraguay, it is the Republic of China (Taiwan); solidarity is not quantified, it is appreciated,” emphasized congressman Walter Harms.
Last year the Senate rejected a draft declaration proposed by Fernando Lugo’s Guazú Front to urge the government of Mario Abdo Benítez to make a political rapprochement with China in exchange for health aid in the fight against covid-19.
China uses its vaccine increasingly as bait, so that entire world regions (have to) submit to the wishes of the Asian giant. And in the face of AstraZeneca’s failures and Pfizer’s apparent contractual uncertainties, it managed to become strong in Latin America together with Russia. Chile and Uruguay are massively vaccinating with Sinovac as well as Brazil and Argentina is applying Sinopharm.
Therefore, the pandemic was an opportunity to resume the debate on the relationship in the Guarani country, which continues to preserve a diplomatic stance that has been maintained since the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989) in the context of the Cold War.
Read: China Injects Vaccine Diplomacy into Brazil and Latin America
Taiwan is aware of this and accused China of using its vaccines to pressure Paraguay to break relations but the margin to compensate its powerful regional rival is quite limited.
Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said China had employed the vaccines as a form of pressure. “The Chinese government has been very active in saying in public that if the Paraguayan government is willing to cut ties with Taiwan, they will get a few million doses of vaccines from China,” Wu said.
Underlying the debate is also a geopolitical calculation to balance China’s influence in the region, and to that end, Paraguay is key. The United States is teaming up with its Pacific allies Japan, India, Australia, and Taiwan to begin to penetrate through the pharmaceutical power of the Indian laboratory Bharat Biotech and its Covaxin, recently authorized by the Paraguayan government.
The Paraguayan government is divided between being a ‘geopolitical laboratory’ to counteract China’s power and the urgency to obtain vaccines fast in the context of overcrowded regional hospitals and a dissatisfied and rebellious population.
Vaccine blackmail in the indo-pacific region
China has been accused of pressuring smaller nations, ravaged by coronavirus and desperate to get their hands on a vaccine supply, into favorable trade deals.
Australia fast-tracked 8000 of its own coronavirus vaccine supply to Papua New Guinea a couple of weeks ago after a coronavirus outbreak swept through the country and has offered “end to end” support for the developing nation.
But other countries around the world, including Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, and the Philippines, have instead made agreements with China.
China currently has five coronavirus vaccines that have been given conditional market approval or allowed for emergency use.
Its two main vaccines – Sinopharm and Sinovac – have been the ones China has made readily available to those nations.
However, experts fear there could be “strings attached” to nations getting their vaccines from China, according to ‘The Australian’ newspaper.
Perth US-Asia Centre director Jeffrey Wilson told the paper that China was no stranger to using “conditionalized economic punishments or inducements” to get what it wanted. “China’s vaccine diplomacy is really just a form of economic diplomacy,” Dr. Wilson said.
“We’ve seen sanctions against Australia, we’ve seen the Belt and Road Initiative, and now we’ve got vaccine diplomacy. They are all fundamentally the same thing, using economic sticks and carrots. It’s a common path of the Chinese aid program which has never been transparent.”
China has also reportedly been making contact with the Solomon Islands, however, the South Pacific nation received its first AstraZeneca doses last week through the COVAX initiative.
Dr. Wilson said China’s negotiating differed depending on the nation, but the deals typically involved the support of Huawei, the nation’s tech giant. “It’s not always Huawei, but they have been very, very active in support of Huawei as China’s national tech champion,” he said.
Both Russia and China have previously rejected accusations they were seeking to use coronavirus vaccines to project their influence around the world.
After talks with Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that both countries were guided by principles of “humanity” rather than geopolitical interests.
“Russia and China have been models of openness, co-operation, and mutual assistance,” Mr. Lavrov said in the southern Chinese city of Guilin in comments released by his ministry.
When it comes to tackling the coronavirus pandemic, he said, it is important to be guided by “humanity and the interests of saving lives” rather than “geopolitical considerations and commercial approaches.”
“Everyone, including our Western partners, who are trying to make Russia and China look like some opportunists in the field of so-called ‘vaccine diplomacy’ should absolutely remember that,” Mr. Lavrov added. “This is absolutely divorced from reality.”
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Mr. Wang said it was wrong to suggest China was “scheming to conduct some vaccine diplomacy,” accusing some countries of “selfish mass hoarding of vaccines.” “Our intention from the start is to let more people receive the vaccine as soon as possible,” he said. “For China and Russia, our choice is not to benefit only ourselves, but rather to help the whole world.”
China, where the first coronavirus cases were found at the start of the pandemic, has supplied several countries with vaccines, sometimes for free.
Russia has been proudly distributing its Sputnik V vaccine, named after the first satellites launched by the Soviet Union.
Critics in the West accuse the two powers of using the vaccines to extend their global influence. Simultaneously, Moscow and Beijing say Western countries are buying up and hoarding vaccines, often to the detriment of developing countries.
Source: La Politica Online/The Australian/efe