Rocío Camerlengo

The US has been far more successful than China in its vaccine diplomacy efforts in Taiwan. Yet, more telling has been Taiwan’s decision to reject Chinese vaccines in spite of growing domestic cases. Still, the ability for Taiwan to rally domestic giants to assist in social leadership as well as deliver a domestically produced vaccine shows the strength of the island caught in the middle.

While China has won goodwill from its PPE donations throughout the pandemic and its quickly growing vaccine distributions, recent US efforts are working well to score back favor. At the end of the day, there is hardly a good quantifier for what the final prize will be; nonetheless, both nations are in a strong position to win global influence for their efforts.