Chinese leader unwilling to accept vaccines from the West despite threat of protests: US intelligence

By: MRT Desk

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Chinese leader unwilling to accept vaccines from the West despite threat of protests: US intelligence

Chinese President Xi Jinping is unwilling to accept Western vaccines despite the challenges China faces with COVID-19, and while the recent protests are not a threat to the Communist Party government, they could affect his personal standing, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence said on Saturday. Avril Haines.

Although China’s daily COVID cases are near all-time highs, some cities are taking steps to relax testing and quarantine rules after Xi’s zero-COVID policy triggered a sharp economic slowdown and public unrest.

Speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California, Haines said that despite the social and economic impact of the virus, Xi “is not willing to take a better vaccine from the West, and instead is relying on a vaccine from China that is nowhere near as effective against omnin.”

“Seeing the protests and the response to them is countering the narrative that he likes to present, which is that China is much more effective in government,” Haines said.

“It’s not, again, something that we see as a threat to stability right now, or regime change or anything like that,” he said, adding, “How it develops will be important to Xi’s position.”

China has not approved any foreign COVID vaccines, opting for domestically produced ones, which some studies say are not as effective as some foreign ones. This means that relaxing virus prevention measures could carry big risks, experts say.

The White House said earlier this week that China had not ordered vaccines from the United States.

A U.S. official told Reuters there was “no expectation at present” that China would approve Western vaccines.

“It seems quite implausible that China would give the green light to Western vaccines at this time. It’s a matter of national pride, and they’d have to swallow quite a bit if they went down this path,” the official said.

Haines also said North Korea acknowledged that China was less likely to hold it accountable for what she said was Pyongyang’s “extraordinary” number of weapons tests this year.

Amid a record year of missile tests, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said last week that his country aims to have the world’s most powerful nuclear force.

In a subsequent panel, Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said China had no motivation to stop any country, including North Korea, that was causing trouble for the United States.

“I would say it’s in their strategy to push those problems,” Aquilino said, referring to China.

He added that China had considerable leverage to pressure North Korea over its weapons tests, but that he was not optimistic that Beijing would “do anything useful to stabilize the region.”

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