With all its innovative skills, China in general has lagged behind other countries in developing fax machines. But that seems to be changing with the race for a coronavirus vaccine, with Chinese companies potentially even at the forefront.
As is often the case with China, the question is: who are we dealing with? Who are the major vaccine developers? How advanced are they in developing a vaccine? What is their approach? What is the connection with the Chinese state? And what is the prospect when China first comes with the vaccine?
Of the 32 faxes that have been in human trouble around the world, a greater number are Chinese companies than might have been expected. The three leading players are Sinovac, CanSino Biologics and Sinopharm.
The proof letters of the companies
Sinovac is a NASDAQ-based company based in Beijing, founded in 2001. It is what we call a specialized vaccine developer and has developed vaccines for hepatitis A and B, seasonal flu, swine flu and avian flu, for example.
It was the first company worldwide to receive approval for a swine flu vaccine in 2009. It is also the only supplier of an avian flu vaccine. Sinovac’s coronavirus vaccine has undergone three clinical trials in Brazil and Indonesia, and the company has already prepared a plant for mass vaccine production in Beijing.
CanSino, the underdog of the three, was founded in 2009 in Tianjin, northeastern China, by a group of senior professionals from various multinational companies. For example, Dr. Xuefeng Yu, a Canadian passport holder, was head of development worldwide for bacterial vaccines at the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur. The company listed in March 2019 in Hong Kong and in Shanghai in August 2020.
In 2014, CanSino became the third pharmaceutical company to develop a vaccine for Ebola. In July 2020, the coronavirus vaccine went through three clinical trials, and in August, its patent was formally approved in China. The clinical trials are being conducted in Saudi Arabia, Mexico and with soldiers from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Sinopharm is owned by the State Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC): the closest a company can come to be part of the central government, and the only pharmaceutical company of that kind in China. Sinopharm has 150,000 employees and more than 1,500 subsidiaries, including six listed companies. Vaccine development is done through two institutes of Sinopharm subsidiary China National Biotec Group: the Beijing Biological Institute and Wuhan Institute of Biological Products.
The latter was the first institute worldwide to conduct clinical trials for a COVID-19 vaccine in April. It was the first to introduce stage three trials in June in the UAE, and most recently in Peru, Morocco and Argentina. It also conducts trials with employees of petroleum conglomerate PetroChina. The chairman of Sinopharm, Liu Jingzhen, recently predicted that the vaccine would be on the market by December 2020.
The Chinese approach
Chinese vaccine developers face an unusual problem: too few people are infected with coronavirus in their home country. This is one of the reasons why they have conducted clinical trials all over the world but especially in friendly countries. Impatient with results, China has also embraced its own regulatory process, which helps explain the trials over soldiers and petroleum workers.
Especially in the current climate, many people in the west would probably assume that these companies are all fronts for the Chinese state, but it is not that simple. True, there is no medical company closer to the government than Sinopharm, but Sinovac was founded as a private company by entrepreneur and leading vaccine scientist Weidong Yin.
The largest shareholder with 15% is SAIF Capital Partners, a major venture capital firm in Hong Kong that was spun out of the Japanese Softbank. The Chinese state has an indirect interest in Sinovac through the University of Beijing, which has a unit called SinoBioWay which has a 13% stake in the pharmaceutical company. The rest of the company belongs to a large variety of small private shareholders and the founder, with the management team still over 10%.
Map of China next to a COVID virus
CanSino, meanwhile, has strong ties with the Institute of Biology at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, an arm of the PLA, through a collaboration with Dr. Chen Wei, who was instrumental in the development of CanSino’s Ebola vaccine, and probably explains CanSino’s COVID-19 vaccine test on soldiers.
Still in terms of business ownership there is no link with the state. CanSino is primarily owned by the founding team and venture capital firms. Remarkably, the name “CanSino” is related to the fact that the founders have lived in Canada for a long time. Canada is also the first country to order vaccines from CanSino, and the only European or North American country to have shown interest in a Chinese vaccine.
The order of priority
If China produces the first COVID-19 vaccine, what will happen then? The Chinese people will probably be the top priority for vaccination. After that, the countries that are partners in the Belt and Road China economic initiative are likely to be the next in line – especially those that have helped with clinical trials.
Furthermore, there may be countries that have been less focal in the geopolitical war between the US and China, such as France, Germany and Switzerland. But who knows: China has been generous – and politically – in supplying face masks and ventilation machines to critics as well.
In conclusion, note that the Chinese are not just monitoring their efforts to create a COVID-19 vaccine. Fosun Pharma is collaborating with Pfizer and German BioNTech on another vaccine initiative – the only Chinese player in an international joint venture. Fosun is also a shareholder in Oxford Science Innovation, which is invested in VacciTech, the company that collaborates on the highly anticipated AstraZeneca vaccine. More interestingly, Huawei and Tencent are also investors in VacciTech. Clearly, the Chinese seem to be betting their bets.
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
