China may be set to take a major step towards catching up with Western nations in the global vaccine race. Whether that will lead Beijing to change its stringent approach to the pandemic is still open to doubt. In November, Suzhou Abogen Biosciences and two partners — Yunnan-based Walvax Biotechnology and the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences — received approval from the Chinese authorities to test its new ARCoVax vaccine in a booster trial. If it proves effective, ARCoVax would be China’s first homegrown mRNA vaccine, using the same cutting-edge technology that enables the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to teach cells to make proteins that trigger antibodies.  China’s major approved vaccines to date have used an older, so-called ‘inactivated’ technology that injects patients with a killed version of the germ. mRNA vaccines have proven far more effective at preventing Covid-19 infections, suggesting widespread adoption of ARCoVax could boost the