Having signed an opaque agreement to “improve China’s health coverage,” Pfizer and China are officially in bed together — two corrupt, authoritarian peas in a pod.
Via CNBC:
U.S. pharma giant Pfizer has signed an agreement with China to cooperate on improving the country’s health coverage, according to the company.
“We are aligned very much with the China ‘Healthy 2030’ [initiative] and we are trying to contribute as much as we can,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC’s Eunice Yoon on Saturday.
He declined to share further details, including dollar amounts.
It’s safe to say the dollar amount was probably quite high. With an annual revenue of around $100 billion, Pfizer isn’t known for small-dollar business deals.
Pfizer’s China chief framed the agreement as one of benevolence and altruism. Pfizer is mostly interested in sharing their “innovative products” with China.
Any individuals and citizens from China would have the same access to our innovative product,” Pfizer China President Jean-Christophe Pointeau said in the report.
He said the company has around 600 staff dedicated to rural areas “to educate the health care professionals on our breakthrough innovation Oncology, Anti-infectives and Inflammation & Immunology.”…
In January, Bourla said Pfizer had signed an agreement with a local partner to manufacture Paxlovid in China, which production could begin in as soon as three or four months.
Infamously, much to the chagrin of the Public Health™ authorities in the West and obviously Pfizer and Moderna, China refused to adopt the mRNA shots, unlike virtually the entirety of the rest of the world. Instead, China developed its own vaccines (which were actually “vaccines” in the sense that they utilized dead bits of the SARS-CoV-2 virus).
Whether the CCP rejected Pfizer and Modern’s mRNA injections out of genuine concern for the public’s health (doubtful), out of nationalistic pride, or out of an unseen geopolitical calculation is up for speculation.
There is undoubtedly much more going on under the surface here that the likes of CNBC are not likely to expound upon for obvious reasons. My suspicion — which is pure conjecture — is that there is some sort of technology transfer or collaboration on biomedical engineering going on.
The CCP does not open up its domestic market to foreign companies for nothing. Everything is transactional with the Chinese, usually with the aim of stealing proprietary technology from the firms they conduct business with.
The Chinese, of course, take the liberty of penetrating whatever global market they wish with impunity, but the openness doesn’t work the other way around. They are not liberals.
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