The union government claims here and elsewhere that it is administering ‘the world’s largest vaccination drive’. I wish it were true. But China is far ahead.⁰ The website also remarks on a ‘world record of 2.5 Cr+ Vaccinations in a day’: China has reached nearly 3 crore (=30 million) as a weekly mean.¹ Vaccination was an opportunity to shine in comparison to China, but the union government seems to have moved rather slowly (not a fault unique to it):
> India’s daily vaccinations surpassed 10 million doses on Friday, with national vaccine production more than doubling since April and set to rise again in the coming weeks.²
That's not an especially useful comparison, though. Cuba and the UAE combined are about the same population as Wuhan, which is a city nobody had even heard of 2 years ago.
Not to discount their success but small countries will always have an easier job than larger ones, since geographic and population scales make everything harder.
I'm pretty sure you can find municipalities of 10-20 million people in China that are more vaccinated that UAE or Cuba.
It's a vastly more useful comparison than simply going by absolute numbers, though. A larger country will have more people to vaccinate, but also more infrastructure to get this done.
If you want to compare countries by how well they are able to vaccinate their population, doses-per-capita is exactly the measure you want.
Yes, China is far ahead of India, but Cuba, the UAE and Urugay are far ahead of China.