This concluding chapter summarizes the key arguments of the book, draws broader lessons for students of IPE and China’s overseas engagement, and takes a forward facing tentative look at some of the challenges and opportunities facing China and its international partners in the area of COVID-19 vaccines. Challenges include efficacy questions posed by new variants, and increased competition, in particular from vaccines using mRNA technology. Opportunities include the potential for Chinese homegrown development of mRNA vaccines, and (perhaps most importantly of all) prospects for technology transfer and manufacturing partnerships that may reduce the dependence of the Global South on outside sources for this critical commodity.

Key arguments and implications

Chinese vaccine supplies to the Global South have attracted substantial global attention, and sparked a polarized debate. On the one hand, the Chinese government is accused by some, mostly in the West, of using COVID-19 vaccines as a tool of strategic geopolitical competition with the United States and its allies, or as a ‘trap’ with which to secure policy concessions from governments of smaller countries. On the other hand, China’s official discourse frames the country’s vaccines as a ‘global public good’, in other words freely and equally available to all.

This debate was particularly salient during the first half of 2021, when China was one of the few countries willing to deliver (as opposed to simply pledge or commit) vaccine doses overseas, and the media in North America and Europe became preoccupied with the notion that China was ‘beating’ the West in the race to vaccinate the world (Smith, 2021). However, it remains highly relevant today, given that a significant minority of the world’s population lacks access to vaccines (Mathieu et al, 2021), and new variants and booster programmes indicate that COVID-19 vaccination is likely to become a routine feature of life over the long term, rather than a one-off pandemicending event.

This book’s central contribution is to look beyond the polarized rhetorical debates to examine where doses of Chinese-made vaccines actually went during the ‘first wave’ of the global rollout vaccines for COVID-19, and to provide empirically grounded, objective, and nuanced explanations for those patterns.