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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has chosen his home city of Sydney to host the QUAD summit in mid-2023, despite Japan expressing serious concerns to China and Russia this week about joint air patrols and scrambled fighter jets over Japan’s sea in response.
While the date of the quadrilateral summit is still to be determined, US President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will travel to Sydney to further cement cooperation to deter China’s provocative and aggressive behavior in the Indo-Pacific region. All four democracies. But before that, India will host the QUAD foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi, the exact date of which is being determined.
While China describes QUAD as an Indo-Pacific NATO primarily aimed at Beijing, the truth is that it is the Xi Jinping regime’s wolf warriors who are pushing democracies together through their aggressive actions and rhetoric. It was because of increased military friction with the PLA that Japan decided to increase its defense budget from 1% to 2% of GDP, while Australia became part of the AUKUS alliance to curb China’s superpower ambitions.
While the US faces corporate espionage and cyberattacks from Chinese MSS agencies, India is locked in a military standoff with China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), especially in East Ladakh and the East. Beijing’s unprovoked objection to India-US high-altitude combat exercises in Uttarakhand has fueled irritation in New Delhi and Washington.
While the four-party cooperation has become the core of the Indo-Pacific counterattack, France, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries have also joined forces with the United States, India and other countries to form a trilateral alliance to jointly resist China’s aggression in the Indo-Pacific region. The aftermath of the war in the Indo-Pacific and Russia-Ukraine.
While Prime Minister Kishida represents Hiroshima in the lower house and embraces nuclear pacifism, China’s military engagements against Taiwan and Japan over the Senkaku Islands have forced Tokyo to bolster its military with advanced missiles, armed drones and aerial platforms. On Thursday, Japan came out against joint Russian and Chinese air patrols, in itself a sign of Tokyo’s pushback. It may be recalled that China and Russia flew six strategic bombers over the waters near Japan on May 24, 2022, in protest of the Quadruple Summit held in Tokyo on the same day.
Quad essentially started as a security organization and has actually diversified into other areas, with partners aligned on trade, economics and health issues. India and Australia now have a free trade agreement, and the security relationship between the two countries has never been strengthened. India and the US are working towards a free trade agreement, and economic partner Japan is pushing for investment to build industry in India as an alternative supply chain. China, with its belligerent actions and middle kingdom mentality, has actually been the driving force behind QUAD.
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