Drawing lessons from its earlier battle with SARS, China has worked out an agile response to the Ebola virus, including dispatch of health workers to West Africa — a move that could also yield substantial diplomatic dividends in a geopolitically contested continent.
Beijing is exercising its soft power heft by trying to combat the deadly disease, which has already claimed 4,500 lives.
Ebola is turning out to be far deadlier than the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that had hit China, and spread rapidly to 30 countries in 2003. SARS had claimed an estimated1, 000 lives after infecting 10,000 patients. In contrast, Ebola has killed half of the 9,000 people that have been infected so far, mostly in the West African cluster of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
China is attacking the disease by sending health workers, and support material to the frontlines. Beijing has already dispatched 200 medical personnel to the affected zone, and complemented that with a $35million pledge in medical aid to Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, as well as the World Health Organisation (WHO).
On Monday, China announced a donation $6 million to fend food shortages in the three worst affected African countries, covering monthly emergency food supplies for 300,000 people, under the watch of the World Food Programme (WFP).
China’s energetic assertion has included supplies to Africa, of an anti-Ebola experimental drug, which has been developed by its military. A Chinese private company Sihuan Pharmaceutical, whose founders are mostly military doctors, is commercialising the drug, which has been developed by a branch of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Stocks of the medicine that are sufficient to treat 10,000 people, have already been shipped to West Africa.
China’s health diplomacy is paying rich political dividends. Sierra Leone’s Foreign Minister Samura Kamara has applauded China’s early response, as an expression of “true friendship,” tested during a time of adversity. “The generous support from China highlights that China is a genuine strategic partner of Sierra Leone and African countries.
The image of China has become even more upright and taller,” he observed.
China’s growing outreach in Africa, amplified during the Ebola crisis, appears to be masking a larger contest for influence with the United States. The alarm caused by the global medical emergency has also been leveraged by Washington to deepen its military foundations in Africa.
In tune with the spread of the epidemic, the U.S. decided to push 3000 troops, to fight the menace, under the umbrella of its Africa Command or Africom. These forces will establish a Joint Force Command headquarters in Monrovia, Liberia, with the stated purpose of providing “regional command and control support … and facilitate coordination with U.S. government and international relief efforts”.
This is significant as the U.S., facing stiff resistance from several local governments, had so far failed to establish a regional military hub.
Their embroilment in a strategic competition notwithstanding, Beijing and Washington, avoiding a public display of their rivalry, have publicly stated their readiness to jointly combat the virus in Africa.
Aware of the danger posed by the outbreak to its 10,000 citizens, who reside in West Africa’s infection prone territory, the Chinese government is working overtime to establish facilities at home that can tackle the disease. Unlike the SARS pandemic when its response was tardy, China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) has already instructed local governments to test their preparedness, and identified hospitals which can treat Ebola cases.
