The Asian giant had seen an explosion of cases in December-January, after the sudden lifting of the strict lockdowns, quarantines and travel restrictions that had run until then.
The vaccine, designed by pharmaceutical group CSPC, has been approved for "emergency use" by the Beijing health regulatory authority, the company said in a statement.
It was very effective in a trial in which it was used as a booster dose for people who had already received other types of vaccines, she added, without elaborating.
Messenger RNA vaccines are generally considered to be among the most effective in reducing severe illness and death from coronavirus.
Conventional vaccines seek to accustom the body to a virus, by introducing it directly into the body, in attenuated or defused form. Those with messenger RNA, which appeared with the Covid-19 crisis, work differently.
They focus on a small part of the virus — in the case of SARS-CoV-2, the so-called "Spike" protein — and aim to inject strands of genetic instructions, called messenger RNA, into the body that instruct the body to make the protein.
Harmless in itself, this "spicule" of the coronavirus is then detected by the immune system which will produce antibodies.
China has not yet authorized any foreign vaccines in the country, including those of the companies Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna that use messenger RNA technology.
© 2023 AFP