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 Chinese population’s collective immunity, particularly in the face of new variants like Delta and Omicron. 

That, in turn, could allow the Chinese government to reconsider the ‘zero Covid’ approach it has adhered to for nearly two years, with immediate lockdowns in hot spot areas and strict border controls, even as other nations have loosened restrictions. In late December, for example, after the Chinese city of Xi’an recorded 52 new Covid cases, the entire population of 13 million was put under strict lockdown. The country’s leader Xi Jinping has not left the country since January 2020.

“A highly effective mRNA vaccine, in combination with new therapeutic means, would give policymakers the confidence to pivot strategies,” says Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). “But is it going to be a gamechanger or not? Show me the data.”

China’s strict pandemic policies have kept its Covid death count remarkably low —  the country has suffered less than 1 percent of the deaths that the U.S. has, according to World Health Organization (WHO) data. But the approach has also contributed to China’s slowing economic growth and inflicted social costs such as increased individual isolation.

CFR’s Huang says the “strategy is facing diminishing returns — it has become increasingly costly and it has become so difficult to reset the cases to zero… If they have highly effective vaccines, maybe they could tell people not to worry about the virus.” 

Others say the Chinese leadership’s desire for political stability in the run-up to the Winter Olympics in February and next autumn’s crucial Communist Party congress could mean it maintains its tight policy stance. 

“With or without mRNA vaccines, there is an option to move away from the zero Covid strategy because the population is more protected now [with the existing Chinese vaccines],” says Ben Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). “There may be other, non-public health reasons to stick to zero Covid.”

With trials still underway inside China, as well as in Indonesia and Mexico, little is known for certain about the efficacy of Abogen’s vaccine. The hope is that it can achieve rates of efficacy at stopping Covid-19 infections close to the 90 percent level of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.¹That rate is for previous variants, not the Omicron variant. 

While around four-fifths of China’s population have received a vaccine already, those have mostly been produced by local giants Sinovac and Sinopharm, with efficacy rates at 51 percent and 79 percent respectively, according to the WHO. Three doses of the Sinovac vaccine do not protect against the Omicron variant of Covid-19, according to a recent study in Hong Kong, and initial tests suggest that Sinopharm does not provide much protection against the new variant either. 

At the pandemic’s outset, Chinese officials prioritized developing vaccines using technology with established track records, rather than trickier new approaches. “In the heat of the pandemic, China just wanted a vaccine. It was a risk for the U.S. to go for the mRNA vaccine,” says Anna Durbin, a professor of international health at Johns Hopkins who specializes in experimental vaccines. “They [China] thought, ‘this is what we know how to do, and we can do it quickly.’”

That mindset changed as doubts have arisen about the homegrown Chinese vaccines’ efficacy. In November, a former Chinese CDC official said that “the real world data showed that using mRNA vaccines… as a booster dose for inactivated vaccines will achieve better results.” 

Last month, Zhong Nanshan, a well-known Chinese respiratory scientist, threw his weight behind mRNA vaccines, saying, “We should learn about the good things in other countries, such as mRNA vaccines.” And in April, Gao Fu, the head of the Chinese CDC, said, “Everyone should consider the benefits mRNA vaccines can bring for humanity. We must follow it carefully and not ignore it just because we already have several types of vaccines already.” 

Abogen may have the answers to the government’s needs. Founded in 2019 by Ying Bo, a Chinese scientist who the company says worked for years at U.S.-based Moderna and Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Abogen’s initial aim was to develop mRNA drugs for cancer and infectious diseases. With the onset of the pandemic, the company soon began to focus on Covid-19 vaccines instead.

In the process, Abogen has secured funding from many high-profile investors, including SoftBank Vision Fund, Temasek Holdings, Yunfeng Capital, Boyu Capital and Lilly Asia Ventures. A few weeks after it received approval to test its vaccine in November it raised $300 million from investors, having already raised $800 million since April.

“All of a sudden they have so much money. They hope that the combination of money and talent works out,” says Brian Yang, Beijing-based senior APAC editor at Pharma Intelligence, an industry market intelligence firm. “They are trying to build the ecosystem [around mRNA technology] in China, but it takes time. The money is always here, but the technology takes time.”

Abogen’s partner Walvax, which is listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, is a more established player in the Chinese vaccine development industry. Though both are private companies, Abogen was 16 percent government-controlled, prior to its recent fundraising drive,²Abogen just restructured its corporate registration documents to list a Hong Kong company, making it more difficult to track its mainland China shares, according to WireScreen compared with Walvax’s 5 percent, according to WireScreen data. Abogen and Walvax did not respond to The Wire’s request for comment.

Abogen’s other partner in the development of a mRNA vaccine is the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS). Just a few weeks ago, the Academy and 11 of its research institutes were added to the U.S. Entity List, which restricts U.S. exports to the firms, because the U.S. alleges they “use biotechnology processes to support Chinese military end uses and end users, to include purported brain-control weaponry.”

China’s desire for a homegrown mRNA vaccine in part stems from its reluctance to rely on overseas manufacturers. Germany’s BioNTech struck a deal with Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group last March to produce its mRNA vaccine inside China for domestic use. Despite initial signals that Chinese regulators would give the green light to the foreign vaccine, final approval hasn’t yet come. 

“It is very unfortunate that they are not approving the BioNTech vaccine,” says Jin Dong-Yan, a virologist at HKU.  “It is better than the Chinese ones we have.” 

More data is necessary to know whether ARCoVax will be that successful homegrown mRNA vaccine: other Chinese companies, including Sinopharm, are working on their own versions, but ARCoVax is furthest along the development process. 

“Everybody is trying to cash in on the mRNA craze,” says HKU’s Jin, “but only a few companies can fly.” 

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