Last week,
China joined Covax, after some initial hesitation.
While the
devil will no doubt be in the detail, this is still great news. While I won’t
deny there’s (more than) a bit of geopolitics involved in this decision, as Adam
Kamradt-Scott and others have argued, and I’m anything but a fan of Xi Jinping,
a ruthless leader who indeed is playing the long-term geopolitical game in many
areas and settings, there are also other ways to look at this.
1. It’s just “common sense”, for China
to do so, in the current situation. With
the current “black hole” administration in the US, Xi would be stupid not to do
so. And Xi is many things, but not stupid, as far as I can tell.
2. It’s even more common sense, if
China anticipates a looming Biden victory. A Biden administration will no doubt
join WHO again, as well as join Covax sooner rather than later. Better to be
there too, then. Even more so if the
ACT-Accelerator turns out indeed a governance format for future health
emergencies, as Tedros seemed to hint at last week.
3. Most importantly, if a future Biden
administration takes such a decision, you will hear a lot more about the US ‘joining
the multilateralism camp’ again, and a lot less about the US ‘playing
geopolitics’.
4. The same goes for ‘Team Europe’, by
the way. Its support for WHO and Covax is not often framed in ‘geopolitical terms’,
even if the European Commission shows the same mix of ‘global citizenship’, ‘vaccine
nationalism’ (or regionalism, in the words of Katri Bertram), support for its
own vaccine makers and pharmaceutical companies, and engaging in geopolitics as
Xi Jinping in the current situation. But
no, you hear a lot more about how much Ursula et al believe in ‘multilateralism’
and are great ‘global citizens’. Another, more neutral, term often used is Europe’s
“global health policy”.
Finally, and
I hate to admit it, but you can also see the Chinese decision as one step
closer to a ‘cosmopolitan moment’ (if I put my ‘half full glasses’ on for
a moment). The world coming together, given the exceptional circumstances.
A lot more
is needed still, though, for such a cosmopolitan moment:
·
Biden
has to win (and then let the US again ‘join the multilateral’ camp (incl WHO
& Covax)).
·
The
billions have to be found to finance the ACT-Accelerator, urgently. My personal preference: I would just tax billionaires.
But there are many other ways to ‘identify’ the billions needed, there really
is a lot of money in this world, if you dare to look where it can be found. In
the direction of the ‘strongest shoulders’, that is.
·
C-TAP
and other initiatives to share COVID-19
health technology related knowledge, intellectual property and data need to get much more prominence. That won’t happen though, as long as civil
society is not systematically included in the governance of Covax and other global
health stakeholders (WHO being no exception, unfortunately), as it’s only
through their pressure that some steps (Moderna) have already been taken. It won’t come from philantrocapitalism or
industry, I’m afraid, now all over the Vaccines pillar of Covax.
In sum, it’s
a bit of both. Geopolitics and a step towards a potential cosmopolitan moment.
Next stop:
November 3.
