A common story you hear is that Chinese vaccines are less effective and that they also do not want to rely on Western vaccines in turn.

What I don't quite understand is why they couldn't just create some joint venture with a Western pharma company and then supply a rebranded version of the mRNA vaccines to their population. I would think they have the propaganda tools at hand to make such a move palatable even to the more nationalist citizenry? Surely this would be preferable to the costly shutdowns.

Probably I'm also unaware of the constraints the Chinese leadership is operating under. I tend to think they have the power to make anything happen with their unlimited propaganda and censorship tools, but perhaps that is not the case and selling a foreign vaccine domestically is harder than I thought.