Even before the official start of the pandemic, its diplomatic aspect was simply bold. For a rather short time, the Chinese tried to hide the nature of the “infection” that had appeared in their country, from the rest of the world. But having understood the essence of the issue, they, with unexpected openness, made a warning to all of us about the threat looming over the world.
And the political game began immediately. Trump, who was already anti-China, began to deliberately refer to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus”. In response, Beijing started fighting its proliferation in such a decisive way, that it achieved incredibly positive results. Especially compared to the disastrous situation in the United States and Western Europe. Chinese diplomacy did not miss the opportunity to introduce the success of China to everyone – it was the only country in the world where the economy still continues growing. For example, the economy of France shrank by almost 10%.
The second stage of the diplomatic war is developing right now. This is a vaccine war. Russia was the first to announce the availability of its vaccine. Western countries reacted sceptically to the announcement, but soon they also announced that they already have had it.
Now the availability of vaccines (there are at least ten of them or even more) has unleashed a real diplomatic battle for segments of the world market. Because the strategic idea is to vaccinate the entire population of the planet. But there are already more than seven billion of us! Although, judging by the current rates of vaccination even in the most developed countries, one involuntarily challenges the possibility of doing this in the coming decades.
Next time we will somehow consider the therapeutic component of utopia.
Victor Loupan
