The Chinese Foreign Ministry held an event on Tuesday to vaccinate 150 foreign journalists against the Wuhan coronavirus, part of Beijing’s big push to win recognition for China as a world leader in inoculations, even as some doctors complained the pace of domestic vaccinations was lagging.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reacted with umbrage when a Japanese journalist pointed out the big 150-shot event for foreign reporters was a propaganda stunt, an encounter China’s state-run Global Times predictably spun into the wise Communist official teaching the immature reporter to appreciate the benevolence of the mighty Chinese state:
The Foreign Ministry offered the opportunity to foreign journalists out of concerns for their health and work, as many of them had asked whether the ministry could help them get inoculated with Chinese vaccines, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at Wednesday’s media briefing.
Hua made the remarks after a Japanese journalist who was among those vaccinated on Tuesday asked Hua the purpose of the vaccination of foreign journalists and what effect the Chinese government expects it to have.
Hua asked him whether he had been vaccinated, and after he gave a positive answer, Hua said that she was a bit shocked by his question.
“Some may worry that China may be attempting to do this for promotion. So you should note that we did no shooting and no reports on the vaccination of foreign journalists,” Hua said.
(By “no shooting” she meant no photo opportunities, an important clarification when dealing with a murderous tyranny).
“They thanked my colleagues and other staff, and some even believed it was a present of spring and said they would call on other foreign journalists in China to get vaccinated,” Hua said of the foreign journalists after they received their free injections of Chinese vaccine. China has supposedly obliterated the coronavirus, so it was not clear why all of these visiting reporters felt it was so important to get vaccinated, or why they did not expect their employers to provide shots.
The Global Times on Wednesday declared China’s vaccination campaign has “entered the fast track with its daily inoculations leaping from 1 million to nearly 3 million within a week.”
According to Chinese officials, over 100 million doses of Chinese vaccine have been administered at home and abroad, “proving that the vaccine is safe and effective.”
The program was said to be on track to inoculate 40 percent of the Chinese population by June, at the rate of 10 million per day. The only potential hitch foreseen by the Global Times was a potential “temporary shortage” over the summer as the vaccination drive is expanded to include people aged 60 or above, but more companies are scheduled for approval to manufacture more vaccines to meet the demand. The number of vaccination sites will reportedly be expanded from 20,000 to 50,000.
The Global Times cited “industry observers” who anticipated China would surpass the United States for the number of doses administered by the middle of next month and noted China is already passing India, “which had dubbed its vaccination drive the biggest in the world.”
As for the problem of convincing people to take experimental vaccines after they were already told the pandemic was over in China, the Global Times saluted such innovative incentive programs as giving Beijing residents coupons for a popular shopping district if they get shots, or sending “community workers” to people’s houses to emphasize that getting inoculated is a public duty.
China’s leading expert in respiratory diseases, Dr. Zhong Nanshan, said in an online seminar on Saturday that China is battling a low vaccination rate because its citizens “felt the country had got Covid-19 [Chinese coronavirus] under control.”
“If China continues with such a low vaccination rate, it will not keep up. There’s a possibility that in the future, other countries will have [herd immunity] but China doesn’t,” Zhong said, as quoted by the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Zhong rebuffed criticism of China’s iron-fisted coronavirus quarantine measures, arguing China’s claim to have the lowest number of cases per million proved authoritarianism worked.
“Because of this strong containment, some countries think that this was really ‘autocratic’ or ‘authoritarian’, and had human rights [concerns]. But actually, you can see the results of this method,” he said.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.