China commits to hasten the admission of BioNTech vaccines into China, according to the German chancellor.

 

China commits to hasten the admission of BioNTech vaccines into China, according to the German chancellor.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in Beijing on Friday that he had received assurances from China that it would speed up the approval process for the new crown vaccine produced by Germany's BioNTech. In turn, he said, he would push for European Union regulatory approval for the Chinese vaccine.

Scholz met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping before wrapping up his one-day visit. Scholz said that BioNTech is also preparing to provide the new crown vaccine to some expatriates in China, calling it a "first step."

For more than two years, BioNTech has been working hard to obtain a license to sell the new crown vaccine in China. The vaccine uses messenger ribonucleic acid technology (mRNA), and China has not yet approved a vaccine using this technology.

Scholz said he has urged China to speed up the approval of BioNTech's vaccine. "I've been a strong advocate that approval should be expedited because from our perspective, there's no reason not to," he said. "I have been assured that no matter what, the approval process will be expedited."

The Chinese government did not immediately respond to that claim. China's National Health Commission held a news conference on Saturday afternoon, following a flurry of rumors that China would loosen its COVID-19 containment policies, sending Chinese stocks to their biggest gains in seven years this week.

But the National Health Commission does not have the authority to approve foreign drugs like the BioNTech vaccine, which require approval through a complex network of other agencies.

State-owned China National Aviation Group, which buys planes on behalf of state-owned airlines, announced separately that it had agreed to buy 140 Airbus jets worth a total of $17 billion. The Chinese government recently halted purchases of Boeing planes amid a plethora of disputes between the U.S. and China. The latest dispute includes severe U.S. restrictions on the sale of high-end semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China.

At the beginning of the epidemic, BioNTech reached an agreement with Fosun Pharma, a private enterprise in Shanghai, under the guidance of BioNTech engineers, to produce BioNTech's mRNA vaccine in a factory in Shanghai.

But China's state-owned vaccine giants have never endorsed the arrangement, continuing to supply their own vaccines. The factory in Shanghai never opened.

China's domestic vaccine uses an inactivated virus, and studies in countries where both vaccines have been used have proven that the inactivated vaccine is not as effective as the mRNA vaccine. There have also been recent signs that China's domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine is much less effective than the mRNA vaccine against the Omicron variant.

Unlike Moderna and Pfizer's partnership with BioNTech, China has yet to launch a new vaccine against the Omicron variant. Omicron mutant strain is the main strain currently prevalent.

Scholz said the approval for foreigners to receive the BioNTech vaccine "is good news for expatriates living in China, allowing them to choose the BioNTech vaccine without the restriction of having to use other vaccines."

BioNTech declined to comment on Scholz's claims. "We hope to make our COVID-19 vaccine available to people in mainland China as soon as possible after the vaccine is approved," the company said in an emailed statement on Friday. "This is part of our global strategy and long-term commitment to China, a market of great strategic importance to us."

China and the European Union have a series of disagreements over approving each other's vaccines. China does not approve vaccines from European companies, and the EU is unwilling to approve vaccines from Chinese companies.

Anything that gives foreigners priority over the Chinese public in getting imported vaccines could create political headaches for the Chinese government. Before the Second World War, especially before the First World War, foreigners enjoyed special treatment in China. At that time, European powers and Japan established dozens of colonies and colonies in the coastal areas of China, and even as far as Wuhan. Concession, the Chinese were indignant about this.

“It would be a bad signal for Chinese society if the Chinese were really excluded,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, professor emeritus of government at Hong Kong Baptist University.

China has allowed its embassy in China to bring mRNA vaccines into China to vaccinate diplomats.

But for the vast majority of expatriates in China, living in China makes getting the mRNA vaccine impossible. When some foreigners go on vacation or business trips outside of China, they will receive the mRNA vaccine as soon as possible after landing. Because very few people living in China have been exposed to the new crown virus, they have almost no immunity after going overseas.

Scholz's trip to China, accompanied by a delegation of 12 German business leaders, has sparked some criticism in Europe that the trip looks a bit like an export promotion. The delegation included Ugur Sahin, founder and head of BioNTech, as well as heads of major German listed companies including Adidas, chemical giant BASF, automaker BMW and Volkswagen.

The German delegation arrived in Beijing after a flight of more than 10 hours, and was grandly welcomed by the guard of honor of the three services at the largely empty airport. China has halted nearly all international travel during the coronavirus pandemic as part of a strict "zeroing out" policy to stem the spread of the virus at home.

After entering the country, Scholz accepted the new coronavirus nucleic acid test conducted by a German doctor, and the nucleic acid test of the accompanying delegation members was completed by a Chinese doctor.

The delegation went from the airport to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, where they listened to the briefings of the German business leaders stationed in China. Afterwards, Scholz had lunch with Xi Jinping. The media is prohibited from attending these events.

Scholz told reporters after a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang that he had asked Xi to put pressure on Moscow to end Russia's war in Ukraine, and he also voiced opposition to what he called China's rising protectionism.

“We have noticed that self-sufficiency efforts are being increasingly discussed in China, whereas previous discussions focused on economic exchanges,” Scholz said. "We had very open and detailed discussions about all of this. I stressed to my hosts how important it was from our perspective to correct those imbalances."

At the five-yearly National Congress of the Communist Party of China that ended on October 23, Xi Jinping has won an unprecedented third five-year term as the top leader, and Scholz is the first EU member to visit China after the 20th CPC National Congress national leaders.

Scholz's visit is important to China, said Shi Yinhong, a professor at the School of International Relations at Renmin University of China. The Chinese government "needs this visit because the Chinese economy is currently in trouble, and because the government wants to show the outside world the brilliant achievements of the 20th National Congress and the future it guides, and tell other EU powers that they should follow the example of Scholz and be more friendly to China." approach", Shi Yinhong said.