Covid-19, Belt and Road Initiative and the Health Silk Road: Implications for Southeast Asia

• Similar to the Belt and Road Initiative, the Health Silk Road is not precisely defined, covering a wide scope of activities, including bilateral and multilateral health policy meetings and networks, capacity building and talent training, mechanisms to control and prevent cross-border infectious diseases, health aid, traditional medicine, and healthcare industry.
• The Health Silk Road is tied to the domestic program of Health China 2030 and builds on existing practices of China’s health diplomacy.
• COVID-19 highlights the need for public health infrastructure for many countries, especially developing countries. The Health Silk Road provides the policy frame for China to strengthen and reform its foreign medical aid system, increase its influence in regional and global health governance, direct BRI investment to basic public health investment, and enlarge China’s role in the supplies of medical products and services.
• Southeast Asia will be an important region where China promotes the HSR. Concrete health cooperation projects will be negotiated bilaterally. Multilaterally (ASEAN) and at the sub-regional level (Mekong region and East ASEAN area), China will engage for the purposes of policy consensus and coordination. Economically, different Southeast Asian countries will have different kinds of investment and trade relationship with China, depending on their level of economic development.

Download PDF here (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Oct 2020)

Coronavirus: China’s belt and road partners call for more cooperation on public health

‘Senior officials from 25 nations involved with China’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative have issued a joint statement calling for great cooperation on public health as the world continues to battle the Covid-19 pandemic. Ensuring fair access to health products and services should be the world’s top priority, the minister-level officials said in a communique released by China’s foreign ministry on Friday following an international videoconference. They also called for greater investment in “sound and resilient” health infrastructure – including the construction of regional storage centres for medical supplies – and committed to improving the availability and affordability of “products of reliable quality”, especially vaccines, drugs and other essential items.’

Read here (South China Morning Post, June 20, 2020)

China rolls out the Health Silk Road

 ‘In a graphic demonstration of soft power, so far China has offered Covid-19-related equipment and medical help to no fewer than 89 nations – and counting...

‘That covers Africa (especially South Africa, Namibia and Kenya, with Alibaba in fact announcing it will send help to all African nations); Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru); the arc from East Asia to Southwest Asia; and Europe...

‘Key recipients in Europe include Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Serbia and Poland. But Italy, most of all, is a very special case. Most are donations. Some are trade – like millions of masks sold to France (and the US)...

‘This Chinese soft power offensive is carefully calibrated to offset the current paralysis of global supply chains. China is now working overtime to supply many parts of the world with medicine and related healthcare items – always with the Belt and Road framework in mind, as if doubling down on Globalization 2.0.’

Read here (Asia Times, April 2, 2020)