Hong Kong imported the vaccines. The city was international enough that using a foreign (non-Chinese) vaccine wasn't a political statement that the Chinese vaccine wasn't as effective. The political calculus is different for China generally.
The plan was to manufacturer the vaccine in Asia for the Chinese market.
I agree that the politically, China didn't want to use Western vaccines.
BioNTech and Fosun Pharma are setting up a 50-50 joint venture to make and sell the COVID mRNA shot in China, with manufacturing capacity to produce up to 1 billion doses a year, Fosun said in a filing (PDF) to the Hong Kong Exchange on Sunday.
Setting up… so you’re saying they don’t have access to it now… Which means they didn’t have access to it in January… Which was my point the entire time.
This just isn't true. There has never been enough global supply for China AND the rest of the world. If there was, why (as you stated) would they be setting up net-new manufacturing of it?
That, coupled with the fact that the Chinese population have resisted getting vaccinated meant that it was never a viable strategy to purchase billions of doses and open up. The only option they had was COVID-0 style strategies.
I dont know why youre so hung up on “not enough supply for China”. There is no binary option. They could have imported multiple vaccines (like Vietnam and many other countries did) and used what they imported.
They didnt.
Instead they used their home grown vaccine which had terrible efficacy.
