China's Covid-19 vaccines were developed fast, rolled out rapidly around the world and proclaimed by President Xi Jinping as a 'global public good' to showcase his country's benevolence.
Hundreds of millions of doses have been despatched abroad after being sold to 28 countries and given away free to more than 60 poorer or strategically important places in an attempt to plug supply gaps around the globe.
This vaccine diplomacy – branded by Beijing as the Health Silk Road – is a key part of the Communist regime's propaganda drive after its early cover-ups inflamed the pandemic and amid growing global suspicions over the virus's true origins.