China and Australia: The saga of vaccination in South Pacific Daily News (via HT Media Ltd.)
China and Australia have started another battle, this time over the COVID-19 vaccination roll out in the South Pacific. In a lengthy article on July 2, China’s Global Times accused Australia of sabotaging China’s COVID-19 vaccination assistance scheme in Papua New Guinea (PNG) by planting “consultants” to manipulate local epidemic policies targeting China, blocking the approval of Chinese vaccine’s emergency use, and threatening senior government officials who were collaborating with China in the vaccine roll-out programme.
The Global Times said that they have “learned exclusively from sources that Australia has been racking its brain to undermine China’s vaccine cooperation with Pacific Island countries”. It said that though China has provided vaccines to PNG to fight the pandemic in February, under pressure from Australian consultants, the PNG government
SHARING OPTIONS:
Taoiseach Micheál Martin alongside Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue at the IFA AGM in 2020. \ Finbarr O Rourke
An Taoiseach Micheál Martin has asked China’s head of government, premier Li Keqiang, to lift the current ban on Irish beef going to China “as a matter of urgency.”
In a letter, seen by the
Irish Farmers Journal, the Taoiseach reminds the premier of his 2015 visit to Ireland when he and his wife, Professor Cheng Hong, visited the farm of Cathal and Mary Garvey in Gorthbrack, near Glencorrib, Co Mayo.
Micheál Martin also thanked Li Keqiang for the assistance Ireland received from China in rapidly sourcing personal protective equipment and other supplies in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.