SIGNATURE WORK
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2022

China’s dramatic economic growth during the past decades has transformed it from a recipient country to a major donor of international foreign aid. China, with the pledge to make COVID-19 vaccines a global public good, has been sending bilateral vaccine donations to other countries. Based on the existing literature on the determinants of China’s foreign aid, my signature work aims to shed light on the motives of China’s COVID-19 vaccine donations from political, economic, and humanitarian perspectives. The results show that countries which share more common interests in international affairs and have better international trade relations with China are more likely to receive more bilateral vaccine donations. In addition, China tends to donate more COVID-19 vaccines to countries with larger populations, which correlates with more COVID-19 cases detected by 2020, and to less developed countries, which cannot afford COVID-19 vaccines to protect their citizens. This project reveals the dual nature of China’s foreign aid during the COVID-19 pandemic: China’s bilateral vaccine donations are both vaccine diplomacy to reward its political alliances and trade partners, and vaccine empathy to help the vulnerable countries in the pandemic.