2021: China’s bond with the ‘Third World’ continues to grow
IN THE face of the lingering crises from the Covid-19 pandemic, China continues to lead the world, particularly the Third World countries, towards hope and progress, assuring the less privileged nations of vaccine supplies and economic opportunities even as the global economy struggled to cope in the year now ending.
In 2021, China showed the world what it means to provide leadership, nationally and internationally, completely containing the impact of the virus; domestically allowing its own economy to continue to thrive and be the engine of economic revival for the rest of the global economy and particularly the developing nations.
The world systems of governance and political ideologies were put to the test again in 2021 and China’s system of democracy it calls the “whole process democracy” proved itself superior once more to previous models that touted itself as the only ‘true’ democracy but failed to deliver during the crucial year of 2021.
These observations are not drawn merely from thin air; many of the claims of some Western nations make of their democratic practices and systems and empirical proof from the data of the past year revealed the undeniable advantage and benefit of China’s system for its own people and to the world.
Vaccine Humanitarianism.
After the first quarter of 2020, China sensed it had the correct management formula for the pandemic. It chose massive assistance to the world by way of production and distribution of vaccines.
President Xi Jinping in May that year announced that China’s vaccines would be for the “global public good” and donated $2-billion to WHO to help other countries respond.
China established the “Health Silk Road”, which I prefer to call the “Life and Health Silk Road” for it also saved lives, supplying in the early periods of the pandemic everything from medical mask to PPEs, face shields to ventilators, to countries East and West.
This was followed by vaccines donations and “global public good” deliveries amounting to billions of doses.
China has been consistent with its “socialist” ideology with the good of mankind at its heart. Even in its vaccines, it relied on traditional “inactivated virus” technology that could be stored in ambient temperature, easily transportable and now proving to be more adaptable to virus variants as it used not only on a spike protein but the whole inactivated virus.
Tracking China’s vaccine donations is not easy as they number to hundreds of millions of doses going to 120 countries.
But in ASEAN, up to 150-million doses have been donated while Africa has reportedly received up to 21-million donated doses. Over and above the vaccine deliveries are the vaccine joint venture productions being set up.
Belt and Road amidst pandemic
Despite the tremendous burden of operating the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects under conditions of the pandemic, all the works proceeded without let up.
In the Philippines the Estrella-Pantaleon Bridge was completed and opened in July 2021, while the Intramuros-Binondo Bridge suffered a slight delay and will open in the first quarter of 2022.
The China-Laos Railway opened in December 2021 linking landlocked Laos to the vast China market and eventually to Singapore in the south.
In Bangladesh, the Padma rail-road bridge is nearing completion while Phase-II of Pakistan’s Karakoram Highway was declared one of the best projects in the world the past year by, hold on, the U.S. Engineering News.
To help Afghanistan, China has made special chartered freight to resume the flow of pine nuts to China reviving incomes of Afghans, while in Sri Lanka, progress in the Colombo Port City and Hambantota projects is reported by the ADB thus, “Sri Lanka’s GDP Growth Projected to Rebound Amid Pandemic and Vaccination” (to be continued next week).
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