engleski

Health Diplomacy as a Soft Power Tool of the PR China during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Health diplomacy, in times of any crisis, is an important component of the foreign policy of world powers with the aim of spreading its geopolitical influence around the world. Since the advent of the COVID-19 virus in late 2019, it has been shown that health systems, even developed countries, have not been prepared to respond adequately to the challenges posed by the coronavirus. We aim to determine whether the People’s Republic of China (hereafter: the PR China), which was even publicly named by the then US President Trump as the source of the infection, calling the COVID-19 virus a “Chinese virus”, seems to be exploiting the global health situation, activating its health diplomacy on a global level as the so-called “soft power” tool for spreading its influence around the world. The European Union (hereafter: the EU), but also the United States of America (hereafter: the USA), only a few months after the outbreak of the crisis, practically remained trapped in their own inertia. On the other hand, the PR China apparently has used every opportunity to expand and strengthen its geopolitical influence through health diplomacy. While the whole of Europe was in complete lock-down, there is no country in Europe that China did not supply with protective equipment, often donating certain quantities. The result of such a health approach, and in the context of the current situation, we can say the “vaccine diplomacy” is a delay in the delivery of vaccines, the only possible solution to the crisis, which again puts the EU in an unfavorable economic and geopolitical position. The focus of this paper is to analyze how the PR China, in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, uses its health diplomacy as a “soft power” diplomatic tool and what this means for China’s future geopolitical positioning.

COVID-19 ; pandemic ; health diplomacy ; soft power ; the PR China ; the EU ; hegemony

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