India’s huge capacity to make coronavirus vaccines is helping the country take on China in the battle to gain political influence across the developing world.
Competition among poorer nations to get cheap or free vaccines to fight the pandemic had given China a golden chance to strengthen ties in emerging markets it has been courting for years. And initially Beijing seemed in a strong position. It suppressed the domestic spread of COVID-19 last year and accelerated the production of shots.
At the same time, India was struggling to contain one of the world’s worst outbreaks of the virus, with nearly 100,000 cases a day, while a nationwide lockdown sent its economy into recession for the first time in 25 years.