58 Time February 15/February 22, 2021
through the prism of competition with
China,” says Gedan, of the Wilson Cen-
ter. Trump’s more controversial moves
also had deleterious side effects. Hondu-
ran President Juan Orlando Hernández in
2018 criticized U.S. cuts to Central Amer-
ican aid over migration policy, while say-
ing he welcomed the “opportunity”
China presented.
If, under Biden, the U.S. continues to
push regional players into a corner, it’s
no sure thing whom they would choose.
“If you press these countries too hard,
beware,” says Enrique Dussel Peters, an
expert in China–Latin America relations
at the National Autonomous University
of Mexico. “They might say, ‘Huh, O.K.,
then I stick with China.’ ”
The pandemic has opened up new av-
enues in the struggle for influence. Latin
America and the Caribbean have only
8.2% of the world’s population but, as of
late January, 18.2% of COVID-19 cases and
26% of fatalities. Shipments of Chinese
aid have elicited fawning praise from pre-
viously China-skeptic leaders like Argen-
tina’s President Alberto Fernández, who
wrote a letter in January that “thanked
China for supporting Argentina’s fight
against COVID-19” and backed “build-
ing a community with a shared future for
mankind, a notion put forward by Xi,” ac-
cording to China’s state newswire Xinhua.
The U.S. State Department is engaged
in its own counter-operation, sources tell
TIME. By cross- referencing pure num-
bers of PPE dispatched by Beijing and
private Chinese entities like the Jack Ma
Foundation with medical need and exist-
ing cordial ties, Washington is learning
where China is placing strategic bets and
deciding where to send its own corona-
virus aid to compete most effectively.
Of course, the prospect of a vaccinewould be “an extraordinary diplomatic
tool anywhere in the world, especially in
Latin America,” says Gedan. China cur-
rently has at least four vaccines in ad-
vanced development, including Sino-
Vac’s CoronaVac, which is undergoing
Stage 3 trials in Brazil. “We will share
our vaccine with the world,” SinoVac CEO
Yin Weidong tells TIME in his Beijing of-
fice. Yet as the Chinese government is a
key investor, it gets a say regarding dis-
tribution, Yin says.
In theory, every nation in Latin Amer-
ica could access the World Health Organi-
zation global vaccination pool known as
COVAX (operated locally through the Re-
volving Fund of the Pan American Health
Organization, or PAHO). But on Jan. 18,
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
said the world is on the brink of a “cata-
strophic moral failure” over COVID-19
vaccine distribution as he bemoaned
how rich countries had hoarded supplies
at the expense of equitable distribution
schemes like COVAX. The U.S.’s refusalWorld
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Taxi drivers in Mexico City protest on
Oct. 12 over the rise of foreign ride-
share apps including Uber and DiDi