As the previous chapter described, the Chinese government’s international donations of COVID-19 vaccines have garnered substantial attention, both positive and negative. However, discussions of China’s role in the distribution of vaccines often fail to observe that the vast majority of Chinese vaccine doses shipped abroad are not donations but commercial sales. The author’s data indicate that of the Chinese-made doses delivered to the Global South during the first six months of 2021, around 90 per cent were commercial sales, and just 10 per cent donated. Unpacking the forces driving these sales is therefore crucial to understanding overall Chinese vaccine supplies. This chapter describes and explains patterns in commercial deliveries of Chinese vaccines overseas during the first six months of 2021, when Chinese exporters Sinovac, Sinopharm and CanSino were some of the few players (alongside AstraZeneca) shipping substantial numbers of doses to low-and middleincome states.

The first section provides an overview of the world COVID-19 vaccine marketplace during the initial rollout of vaccines, and situates China within it. The second section describes how Chinese firms were able to seize the opportunity of the pandemic to boost their position in global vaccine markets, in part thanks to their linkages with and support from the state. The third second section maps the distribution of vaccines sold by Chinese manufacturers during the first six months of 2021. The distribution of vaccines sales indicates that they were driven by two factors: first, market forces, and specifically by the classic ‘gravity’ model, in which trade is correlated with economic size and distance; and second, clinical trial partnerships between purchasing countries and Chinese vaccine companies, which turned to overseas partners to test the efficacy of their new products due to low case numbers in China.

The world COVID-19 vaccine marketplace

Customers from the Global North dominated the demand side of the market for COVID-19 vaccines during the initial global vaccine rollout. Up to mid-2021, of the total vaccine doses around the world agreed or in negotiation via commercial purchasing deals with manufacturers, two thirds involved high-income purchaser states, while around 16 per cent involved middle-income purchasers and just five per cent involved low-income purchasers.