Taiwan blames ‘outside forces’ for blocking the BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine deal. China says it had nothing to do with it

Taiwan blames ‘outside forces’ for blocking the BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine deal. China says it had nothing to do with it

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Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said on Thursday that it was “pure manufacturing” that Beijing intervened in the sale of the BioNTech vaccine to Taiwan, the state news agency Xinhua reported.
A day earlier, Taiwanese Health Minister Chen Shih-chung said in a radio interview that Taiwan and BioNTech were about to sign a deal for 5 million doses of vaccine in December, when the company suddenly gave up.

“In the process of (discussing the agreement), I have always been concerned with the intervention of outside forces,” said Chen, without mentioning any country. “We believe there was political pressure,” he said. “At that time, we had already prepared our press release. But certain people do not want Taiwan to be very happy.”

In his statement on Thursday, Ma, from the Taiwan Affairs Bureau of China, also accused Taipei of trying to “bypass” BioNTech’s general agent in Greater China, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group.

Fosun, a company based in China, signed a “strategic collaboration” agreement with BioNTech last March, giving it the rights to develop and market the coronavirus vaccine from the German pharmaceutical company in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

But Chen said the Taiwanese government had never contacted Fosun, but had spoken directly to BioNTech in Germany. BioNTech also never asked Taiwan to negotiate with Fosun, he added.

Fosun did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Taiwanese pharmaceutical company TTY Biopharm, which was involved in negotiations with BioNTech, declined to comment, citing a confidentiality agreement between the two companies.

In a statement on Thursday, BioNTech said discussions with Taiwan were ongoing. “BioNTech is committed to helping end the pandemic for people around the world and we intend to supply our vaccine to Taiwan as part of that global commitment,” said the statement.

Concern that political pressure could prevent the deal with BioNTech has prevented Taiwan’s Health Minister Chen from discussing the matter publicly while negotiations were underway, he said in Wednesday’s interview.

At a news conference on Thursday, Chen praised BioNTech’s statement and called it “an initiative to send goodwill”. “We hope to be able to continue and finish our original contract,” he said.

In December, when Taiwan and BioNTech were close to signing the agreement, Chen announced at a news conference that the self-managed island had secured nearly 20 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, including 4.76 million through the COVAX initiative, 10 million from AstraZeneca and another 5 million from a company “which is completing final confirmation”.

But shortly after that announcement, BioNTech gave up on the deal.

Although Chen did not mention the name of China, he dealt a disguised coup in Beijing after it went off the air during a commercial break.

“It’s just like our (attempts to) participate in the World Health Assembly,” he told the host, referring to Beijing’s blockade of Taiwan from participating in the annual World Health Organization assembly as an observer since President Tsai Ing -wen took office in 2016.

A difficult task

The stoppage of the agreement between Taiwan and BioNTech is the most recent example that highlights the difficulties in the global distribution of vaccines, which health experts say is fundamental to ending a pandemic that killed more than 2.4 million worldwide.
While several companies have overcome scientific obstacles to developing effective Covid-19 vaccines, distributing them can be a daunting task, with the risk of disruption due to various commercial, political and geopolitical tensions.

Beijing claims total sovereignty over Taiwan, a democracy of almost 24 million people located on the southeast coast of mainland China, despite the fact that the two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed that Beijing will never allow the island to become fully independent and has refused to rule out the use of force if necessary.

Cross-strait ties have eroded since Tsai’s independence-inclined Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) came to power, and the pandemic further damaged relations.

On Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry attacked Taipei, accusing it of “using the pandemic as an excuse to engage in political manipulation and overdoing political issues”.

“The Democratic Progressive Party must … do real things to promote the health and well-being of people in Taiwan,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying at a news conference.

Taiwan has been a rare success in the fight against coronavirus, thanks to its swift action to ban travel from mainland China at the start of the outbreak in Wuhan, in addition to imposing strict border controls and quarantine requirements during the pandemic. As of Friday, the island recorded only nine deaths and less than 1,000 infections – most of which were imported cases.

But when it comes to vaccination, Taipei has lagged behind many other Asian governments. Chen previously told Taiwan’s state-run Central News Agency that the island could start offering vaccines against Covid-19 in June. Thanks to the success in containing the virus, Taiwan faces less pressure for a rapid implementation of mass vaccination, in contrast to hard-hit countries like the United States and Britain.

Meanwhile, China has promised to make its vaccines a “global public good”. The Chinese government said this month that it is providing vaccine aid to 53 countries and exporting doses to 22 nations. Taiwan is not on the list of these recipients.

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