Published Tuesday, March 2, 2021 5:59AM EST TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The plane laden with vaccines had just rolled to a stop at Santiago's airport in late January, and Chile's president, Sebastian Pinera, was beaming. “Today,” he said, “is a day of joy, emotion and hope.” The source of that hope: China - a country that Chile and dozens of other nations are depending on to help rescue them from the COVID-19 pandemic. China's vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: It has pledged roughly half a billion doses of its vaccines to more than 45 countries, according to a country-by-country tally by The Associated Press. With just four of China's many vaccine makers claiming they are able to produce at least 2.6 billion doses this year, a large part of the world's population will end up inoculated not with the fancy Western vaccines boasting headline-grabbing efficacy rates, but with China's humble, traditionally made shots.