China has announced that it will introduce a digital passport to facilitate the transit of people already vaccinated against Covid-19 and who are not carriers of the new coronavirus.
At the same time, the country responded to criticism that it was prioritizing vaccine diplomacy by launching a vaccination campaign for Chinese people living abroad, including in places like the disputed island of Taiwan.
The announcements were made by Chinese Chancellor Wang Yi in an interview during the meeting of the National People’s Congress, one of the two sessions that crowns the legislative year of China’s dictatorship – the other is to an advisory body.
According to Wang, a digital passport is being finalized that will give China and other countries the opportunity to check the results of tests for the presence of the virus (RT-PCR) and also whether the traveler has already received one. vaccines on the market.
He gave no details on how it would work compared to other countries, but said “privacy will be fully protected.”
The initiative has been discussed in other countries and is controversial. In February, the World Health Organization opposed passports over technical issues, such as doubts about their accuracy, especially with new variants of the virus in the wild, and ethical, given the uneven distribution. vaccines around the world.
Yet this type of control seems to be a trend. The country that has vaccinated its population the most, proportionately Israel instituted the ‘green passport’ for home use – an app shows who received two doses of the immunizer or who had Covid-19, opening the doors of shopping malls, hotels, gyms like.
Country where the pandemic appeared at the end of 2019, China has succeeded in controlling and impacting the coronavirus.
However, its vaccination program is moving slowly due to the size of its population – the largest in the world, with 1.4 billion people, of which 52 million (3.75%) have already been vaccinated.
So, Wang announced the Spring Moult Action, seeking to extend vaccination to Chinese citizens abroad – they form large minorities in places like Taiwan and Singapore.
The Chinese character of the seedlings is the same as that used for the vaccine. “No one will be left behind in our diplomacy for the people,” Wang said, stressing, however, that China will continue to support vaccination programs in other countries.
The Chinese are the main vaccines used today in Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey, for example. In these cases, vaccines are purchased, but batches have been donated to poorer countries, such as Iraq, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, as part of China’s geopolitical effort to improve its international image.
Two semi-autonomous Chinese territories, Hong Kong and Macao, also received doses from the central government of the dictatorship.
Such a move is also happening in Russia, which has already seen its Sputnik V approved in 46 countries, and in India – which has a similar challenge to China to vaccinate 1.3 billion people, but exports supplies and ready-to-use vaccines.