Quad Plus and Indo-Pacific

The Changing Profile of International Relations

Jagannath P. Panda, Ernest Gunasekara-Rockwell, Jagannath P. Panda, Ernest Gunasekara-Rockwell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000521214
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Ethnische Studien

This book explores how the Quad Plus mechanism is set to reshape the global multilateral economic and security co-operations between Quad partner countries and the rest of the world.

With the Quad partners – Australia, India, Japan and the United States – seeing deteriorating ties with China, the book provides a holistic understanding of the reasons why Quad Plus matters and what it means for the post-COVID Indo-Pacific and Asian order. It goes beyond the existing literature of the global Post-COVID reality and examines how Quad Plus can grow and find synergy with national and multilateral Indo-Pacific initiatives. The chapters analyze the mechanism's uncharacteristic yet active approach of including countries like South Korea, Israel, Brazil, New Zealand and ASEAN/Vietnam for their successful handling of the pandemic crisis, thereby reshaping the new world's geopolitical vision.

A unique study focused solely on the intricacies and the broader dialogue of the 'Quad Plus' narrative, the book caters to strategic audiences as well as academics researching International Relations, Politics, and Indo-Pacific and Asian Studies.

Part I

Beijing, Quad and the Quad Plus

DOI: 10.4324/9781003206408-2

1 China’s views of the Quad and Quad Plus arrangements

Jeffrey Becker

DOI: 10.4324/9781003206408-3

Introduction

In January 2021, the US Navy and naval and air forces from Australia, India, Japan and Canada took part in the multilateral anti-submarine warfare exercise Sea Dragon 2021, in what some would quickly label a “Quad plus 1” event.¹ Meanwhile, analysts in South Korea have begun discussing whether that country should play a larger role in Quad activities, or whether remaining aloof from the Quad could impact the county’s relations with the United States.² Two days after the completion of the Sea Dragon exercise, while speaking at an online forum hosted by the US Institute for Peace, President Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, noted that the US was open to the possibility of working with and expanding upon the Quad, saying:

We really want to carry forward and build on that [Quad] format, that mechanism, which we see as fundamental, a foundation upon which to build substantial American policy in the Indo-Pacific.

In response to these events, Chinese officials have, to date been relatively muted. When asked about the possibility that the United States sought to strengthen the Quad, People’s Republic of China (PRC) Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying simply stated “we hope that cooperation between relevant countries is open, inclusive, and win–win”, and is “a positive force for good, and not an attempt to target specific countries”.³

Hua’s tone appeared to echo that of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who famously argued in 2018 that the Quad was a “headline grabbing idea” that “would soon dissipate”. Others, however, such as Luo Zhaohui, China’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Asian Affairs, have been less sanguine. Speaking at a Foreign Ministry seminar in September 2020, Luo described the Quad as an “anti-China front line”. He also referred to the Quad as “the ‘mini-NATO’”, thus connecting the Quad’s rise to one of Beijing’s older, longstanding concerns.⁴

Since its re-emergence in 2017, the Quad has been a subject of both debate and speculation. How does China perceive cooperation among Quad countries, or even among the Quad and an additional grouping some have labelled as “Quad Plus” arrangements? This article examines how the Quad is being viewed from China, and how Chinese academics and government- and military-affiliated analysts view its potential impact on Chinese interests in the region.

With its origins in the response to the December 2004 Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, Quad country representatives would meet for the first time in May 2007, on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Manila.⁵ That September, navies from the four Quad countries, as well as participants from the Singapore Navy, would participate in the Malabar naval exercise, held 350 km southwest of the Andaman Islands.⁶

This increased cooperation would not go unnoticed in Beijing. Following the Manila meetings, China issued formal diplomatic protests to each of the Quad countries.⁷ When asked about the 2007 five-nation Malabar exercise, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu noted that China calls upon “all countries to establish a new security concept and carry out dialogue and cooperation on the basis of mutual trust and mutual benefit”.⁸ Meanwhile, Beijing sought to convince Canberra and New Delhi that an assertive Quad arrangement could jeopardise their economic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

While Beijing was successful in slowing Quad cooperation, in 2007–2008, China’s re-evaluation of the balance of power in Asia following the 2008 financial crisis helped bring the Quad back into play.⁹ Following the crisis, Chinese leaders saw an opportunity to modify Deng Xiaoping’s traditional axiom of “keeping a low profile and biding one’s time” and instead pursue the country’s overseas interests more aggressively.¹⁰ Indeed, in the decade since, one can see this assertive posture in a range of activities, including the establishment of an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, island building in the South China Sea, and continued border disputes with India.

Economically, Chinese domestic growth slowed during this time as the economy grew and matured, with GDP growth declining from more than 14 per cent in 2007 to less than 7 per cent in 2017, while demands for imported energy continued to grow.¹¹ In part, this demand for new sources of growth helped spur China’s outward economic expansion in the form of overseas investment projects, culminating in China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), President Xi Jinping’s flagship policy designed to leverage Chinese lending, investment and technical expertise to integrate China more closely with the rest of the world, primarily through infrastructure development.¹² As China’s reliance on overseas energy imports and overseas investments grew, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), particularly the PLA Navy (PLAN), was given responsibility for protecting these interests. This subsequently expanded the PLAN’s presence in the Indian Ocean beyond its traditional counter-piracy operations, to include submarine patrols and the establishment of the PLA’s first overseas base in Djibouti.¹³

This reassessment of the international situation post-financial crisis, and corresponding shift toward a more assertive PRC foreign policy, served to rekindle interest in cooperation among the four Quad member-states. In the United States, this was made evident in the Trump Administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy, which noted the desire to “seek to increase quadrilateral cooperation with Japan, Australia and India”.¹⁴ While not naming the Quad specifically, Australia’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper notes that it pledges to “build on the growing strategic collaboration between Australia, India and Japan”.¹⁵

The re-emergence of the Quad was witnessed in November 2017, as senior officials from all four countries met again in Manila ahead of that year’s ASEAN summit.¹⁶ Between 2017 and 2019, Quad member representatives would meet again in Singapore in June and November 2018, and New York and Bangkok in September and November 2019. In March, the four countries met in an expanded “Quad Plus” virtual session at the vice-ministerial level, involving South Korea, New Zealand and Vietnam.¹⁷In November 2020, Australia once again joined India, Japan and the United States in the Malabar naval exercise after a 13-year hiatus.¹⁸

In February 2021, foreign ministers from all four Quad countries held a virtual meeting for the first time under the Biden Administration. According to the US State Department’s official press, the US emphasised cooperation on COVID-19 response and recovery, as well as combating climate change.¹⁹ Meanwhile, Japanese readouts emphasised the “challenges to the existing international order”,²⁰ while Australia noted the need to “respect[ing] and uphold[ing] international rules and obligations”,²¹ and India emphasised the group’s “commitment to upholding a rules-based international order, underpinned by respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty”.²²

Publicly, official PRC government statements were not as strident following the Quad’s “revival” in 2017 as they were in 2007 (China did not, for example, demarche all four countries as it did in 2007). However, Beijing certainly took notice, often seeking to link India and other Quad members’ activities directly to US policies. When asked about the Quad meetings in Manila, PRC Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang stated that “these visions and proposals [in the Indo-Pacific] should be open and inclusive and conducive to enhancing win–win cooperation. Politicised and exclusionary ones [i.e. the Quad] should be avoided”.²³ When asked about Malabar 2017, Geng provided similar comments, noting, “We hope such relations and cooperation are not targeted at a third party and are conducive to regional peace and stability”.²⁴ When asked about the Quad at the March press conference for the first session of the 2018 National People’s Congress, Wang Yi noted:

It seems there is never a shortage of headline-grabbing ideas. They are like the sea foam in the Pacific or Indian Ocean: they may get some attention, but soon will dissipate. Contrary to the claim made by some academics and media outlets that the “Indo-Pacific strategy” aims to contain China, the four countries’ official position is that it targets no one. I hope they mean what they say and their action will match their rhetoric.²⁵

Chinese media coverage, however, was more strident. Writing in the Global Times immediately following the 2017 Manila meetings, Ling Shengli of the China Foreign Affairs University argued that “interference [in the South China Sea] by the US, Japan, Australia and other nations … cannot be left unnoticed” and was adding tensions to an otherwise peaceful environment in the South China Sea.²⁶ The overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee, raised the question “Should the United States, Australia, Japan...