WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Portal) – Chinese leader Xi Jinping is unwilling to accept Western vaccines despite the challenges China faces with COVID-19 and although recent protests pose no threat to Communist Party rule , they could damage his personal reputation. That said US intelligence director Avril Haines on Saturday.
Despite China’s daily COVID cases reaching near all-time highs, some cities are taking steps to ease testing and quarantine rules after Xi’s zero-COVID policy sparked a sharp economic slowdown and public unrest.
Haines said at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California that despite the social and economic impact of the virus, Xi is “unwilling to take a better vaccine out of the West, relying instead on a vaccine in China that simply doesn’t.” is almost as effective against Omicron.”
“To see protests and the response to them contradicts the narrative he likes to put forward, which is that China is so much more effective in government,” Haines said.
“Again, it’s not something that we currently see as a threat to stability or regime change or anything like that,” she said, adding, “How it plays out will be important to Xi’s standing.”
China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent Sunday.
China has not allowed foreign COVID vaccines, opting for domestically made ones, which some studies say are not as effective as some foreign ones. This means that relaxing antivirus measures could come with major risks, according to experts.
China has not asked the United States for vaccines, the White House said earlier this week.
A US official told Portal there is “currently no expectation” that China will approve western vaccines.
“It seems pretty far-fetched that China would give the green light to Western vaccines at this point. It’s a matter of national pride and they’d have to swallow quite a bit if they went that route,” the official said.
Haines also said North Korea recognizes China is less likely to hold it accountable for what it says is an “extraordinary” number of weapons tests in Pyongyang this year.
Amid a record year for missile testing, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said last week his country aims to have the world’s most powerful nuclear power plant.
In a later panel, Admiral John Aquilino, commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, said China had no motivation to restrict a country, including North Korea, that was causing problems for the United States.
“I would argue quite differently that it is in their strategy to push these problems,” Aquilino said of China.
He said China has considerable leverage to pressure North Korea over its weapons tests, but isn’t optimistic Beijing will “do anything helpful to stabilize the region.”
Reporting by Michael Martina, David Brunnstrom, Idrees Ali and Eric Beech; Additional reporting by Martin Quin Pollard in Beijing; Edited by Sandra Maler and Lincoln Feast
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