How do Chinese netizens view the EU’s free gift of vaccines

China’s response to the EU’s offer to provide free messenger vaccine (mRNA), widely used in Western countries and widely recognized as effective against the novel coronavirus and its variants, is, to put it mildly, “declining”.
“Will China accept vaccines provided by the EU? Foreign Ministry: Domestic products are enough”, Ifeng.com said in a headline.

A Reuters reporter asked at a regular meeting of the Chinese Foreign Ministry on January 3: Does China accept the EU’s offer to provide messenger vaccine to China to contain the epidemic? Overall supply is ample.” “It can meet all the needs of the Foreign Ministry.” It is accurate and vivid to say that the Chinese media simply condensed the Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s answer as “enough for domestic production.”

Chinese netizens also reacted enthusiastically to the article, which reported that a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson had responded to the EU’s proposal to give free vaccines.
Netizens’ reactions are mixed, with some echoing the official ones, such as: Our vaccine is sufficient, our vaccine is very effective, we don’t need foreign vaccines.

“Knowing that China’s own vaccines are sufficient, the EU deliberately offered to help China, trying to stand on the moral high ground and catch China between the two sides. It has bad intentions,” said a netizen from Zhejiang Province.
“The West wants to do something bad. I’ve seen it for a long time!”

The EU wants to present China with globally recognized high-efficiency vaccines, but there is no question of occupying the commanding heights in China. As for the claim that the EU knows that China has enough vaccines, the general opinion in Western countries is that China has weak vaccine efficacy and insufficient complete vaccination, especially for the elderly population.

There is also a suspicion that the EU is “a weasel wishing a New Year to a chicken”, taking advantage of the tsunami in China by offering vaccine reinforcements and “making China lose face”.
But the negative responses, many of which were almost identical in format, were robot-like, leaving a sense of being manipulated.

There was also a lot of pragmatic, tolerant and scientific reactions from netizens, who were not impressed by the authorities’ refusal. “Can we give people the right to make their own choices?” asked Lian Nishang, a netizen from Jiangsu Province. “Give the people a scientific choice,” said Sichuan netizen Zhou Daobao.

In fact, Jin Dongyan, a professor at the School of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong, also said in an interview with Ifeng.com on January 2 that he called on the Chinese government to “approve mRNA vaccine and a new generation vaccine against Omicron as soon as possible, so as to transform the crystallisation of human scientific wisdom into a practical weapon to protect life and health”.