On the eve of the 29th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and China, on April 1, a welcoming ceremony was held for the first batch of coronavirus vaccines delivered from China to Azerbaijan. This is an important indicator of the high level of bilateral ties. Despite the fact that earlier Azerbaijan established the supply of Chinese vaccine from Turkey, China took care of organizing a "green corridor" for further delivery of the vaccine directly from China to Azerbaijan.

In recent years, thanks to the personal support of Chinese President Xi Jinping and his counterpart Ilham Aliyev, Sino-Azerbaijani relations have are developing, political mutual trust continues to deepen, and cooperation on the joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative is bringing expected significant results.

In this sense, in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, Azerbaijan and China actually proved what friendship and cooperation are. At the time of total quarantine in China, when the country was in a global time pressure due to the shutdown of production facilities, Azerbaijan provided assistance to China by dispatching a consignment of medical supplies. Beijing, of course, did not forget this, and when the Chinese economy, a few months later, recovered from the consequences of quarantine, China followed by a reciprocal gesture of gratitude. This is a high level of trust and mutual assistance.

At the same time, as one of the largest manufacturers of coronavirus vaccines in the world, China is now actively supplying its vaccines to various regions of the planet. Because many countries around the world are choosing the Chinese vaccines due to their reliability and high efficiency. In particular, in just a few months of this year, Chinese vaccines have been shipped to various countries in Europe and Asia.

It is worth noting that today in the world with highly effective Chinese vaccines, since November 2020, the population of such countries as Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Turkey, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and many other countries has been massively vaccinated.

At the same time, China is increasing its vaccine production at an accelerated pace, in opposition to the manufacturing vaccine crisis in Europe, proving that it can become the largest supplier of life-saving drugs on the planet. Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech has already launched its third coronavirus vaccine production line, increasing production to 2 billion doses per year. And this is a very impressive figure - at the end of last year, the company was able to produce only 600 million doses of vaccine per year. What does this mean? The fact that, since the demand for Chinese vaccines is growing, it means that the international community gives a positive assessment of the high level and safety of Chinese vaccines.

Adhering to the concept of building a community of shared human destiny, China was the first to pledge that Chinese vaccines would be available to the entire world and thus serve as China's worthy contribution to ensuring the availability of vaccination in developing countries. As we can see, at a critical moment in the global response to the epidemic, China by its actions shows that it is fulfilling its obligations to promote the distribution of vaccines among countries.

Today, as the global fight against the pandemic has entered a critical stage, developing countries and even some European countries need China's help even more, as vaccine shortages and inequitable distribution are found around the world and protectionism and double standards in vaccine distribution are widespread. China has always advocated and continues to advocate equitable distribution of vaccines. China's participation in the Covax mechanism is an unconditional progress and a positive sign, as many countries are optimistic in Beijing that all vaccination processes will be transparent and fair. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that China is making every effort to ensure that this is the case. Because a big role in the creation of a planetary "vaccine shield" against attacks of coronavirus infection belongs to China at the moment, which has already provided life-saving vaccines to many peoples on the planet.

Seymur Mammadov is the director of the international expert club EurAsiaAz and editor-in-chief of Azerbaijan's news agency Vzglyad.az.

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