New England Patriots give flight to China’s vaccine diplomacy

The New England Patriots’ team plane has delivered 500,000 Chinese-made COVID vaccines to El Salvador — and in the process inadvertently inserted itself into a testy, geopolitical fight for influence in Latin America.

The “Pats Plane” was greeted upon arrival in San Salvador early Wednesday, just after midnight, by China’s top diplomat to the tiny Central American country.

The team says it had been aware of the flight but didn’t arrange it – that was done by a company that leases out the plane when the Patriots aren’t using it.

While the Boeing 767 — emblazoned with the six-time Super Bowl champions’ red, white and blue logo — drew much of the local and international media attention, when the cargo bay opened to offload a huge crate bearing Chinese script. Ambassador Ou Jianhong said China “would always be a friend and partner” of El Salvador.

Her comments were a not-so-subtle dig at the Biden administration, which in recent weeks has slammed President Nayib Bukele over the removal of several Supreme Court magistrates and a top prosecutor, which it warned undermines El Salvador’s democracy.

Bukele, who hasn’t been shy about leveraging budding ties with China to seek concessions from the U.S., touted the vaccine delivery — El Salvador’s fourth from Beijing since the pandemic began — in several social media posts. To date, the country has received 2.1 million doses from China but not a single shot from the U.S., its traditional ally and biggest trading partner as well as home to more than 2 million Salvadoran immigrants.

“Go Pats,” Bukele tweeted out Thursday with a smiling face with sunglasses emoji — even though the team itself had almost nothing to do with the flight

Across Latin America, China has found fertile ground for so-called vaccine diplomacy that seeks to turn back decades of U.S. dominance. The region is the hardest hit in the world from the virus, with eight countries among the top 10 deadliest on a per capita basis, according to Our World in Data, an online research site.

Meanwhile, a deep recession has wiped out more than a decade’s worth of economic growth and governments in several nations are facing mounting pressure and even violent protests from voters outraged by the failure to control surging infection rates.

This week, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which advises Congress on the national security implications of China’s rise, warned that the U.S. needed to begin sending its own vaccines to the region or risk losing support from longtime allies.

“The Chinese have made every delivery to an airport tarmac into a photo op,” R. Evan Ellis, a China-Latin American expert at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, told the panel on Thursday. “The president comes out and the boxes roll off with Chinese flags on them. So the Chinese, unfortunately, have done a much better job marketing.”

Stacey James, a Patriots spokesman, said the team played no direct role in the vaccine’s delivery and dismissed suggestions it was picking sides in a geopolitical fight.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3bKZQZ6