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These separate incidents taking place around the world suggest that Beijing's vaccine diplomacy, once the envy of the world, has run into two fundamental problems. For one, the two Chinese jabs simply don't cut the mustard when it comes to efficacy, especially against the Delta variant. It's been estimated that the protection offered by the Chinese vaccines against the new strain could be up to 20 per cent lower than against the original coronavirus, coming down from already low efficacy numbers of 51 per cent for Sinovac and 79 per cent for Sinopharm.

Countries like Chile, Bahrain, Mongolia, and the Seychelles are finding out that after using the Chinese vaccines they need a much higher level of vaccine coverage to beat back new infections. It's a problem that China itself will soon have to face - with the Delta variant currently in 17 Chinese provinces. Many countries though have no other choice. Until the G7 begins rolling-out the one billion vaccines they have promised to give the rest of the world, China's vaccines will continue to dominate. As one Indonesian academic recently said, 'Sinovac is the only choice'.

The other problem is more prickly. Beijing is now finding that its best photo op partners - strongman leaders across the world who accepted the Chinese vaccines and whose supplicatory gestures and grateful words adorned Xinhua reports in China - are, in fact, not such a blessing. Take the current Thai protests, which have bubbled over from the 2020 student protests and which are fuelled by existing political grievances. In this climate Sinovac has found itself lumped in with a government under siege. In Peru, the President who helped himself to Sinopharm before it was approved for the rest of the population was impeached soon after, on separate corruption accusations. In various countries, Chinese vaccines have come to be associated with incompetent or coercive national governments, who are often seen as forcing the Chinese vaccine on their sceptical people.

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