Drawing on a novel dataset collecting China’s Covid-19-related donations of personal protection equipment, and PEW survey data from 2019 to 2021, this paper argues that despite the historically unprecedented scale of China’s Covid-19 humanitarian aid to advanced economies in 2020, its country image effects appear in retrospect both mixed and short-lived. The findings help us to better understand the limits of Chinese humanitarian aid and disaster relief efforts as a form of soft power projection of making China appear as a ‘responsible great power’.