Beijing's uneasiness is revealed by Chinese potshots at QUAD

Since its resurgence in 2017, the Xi Jinping government and its wolf warriors have been taking potshots at the QUAD grouping. From foreign minister Wang Yi's poetic depiction of QUAD as seafoam in the Pacific or the Indian Ocean to assertive new NATO in the past, Beijing on Wednesday branded it a Cold War-era product and a confrontational group against China. China was pursuing peace, development, and cooperation, not targeting any third country, according to the update to rapid-fire barbs. Tomorrow, the QUAD foreign ministers will meet in Melbourne.

The Chinese statement issued on the day of the QUAD summit is intended to put not just the QUAD participants on the defensive, but also ASEAN countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, which have been hit hard by Chinese Communist Party expansionism in the South China Sea. The advice to ASEAN is to avoid becoming infected by QUAD and to stick to the Beijing-defined chopsticks culture boundaries.

The fact is that QUAD's focus is on a positive agenda of Indo-Pacific partner cooperation on health and vaccine support, disaster relief, climate change, emerging and essential technologies, infrastructure development, and a free and open Indo-Pacific. This is in stark contrast to China, which is rapidly expanding and aggrandizing its military in the area and beyond, ushering the globe into a new Cold War era.

After the Cold War, QUAD is working on projects that go beyond alliances. China wants to retain the old order in place and keep India contained to the South Asia box by keeping its proxy Pakistan in a constant state of conflict with New Delhi. Apart from assisting Islamabad in developing its nuclear capacity and delivery systems, China has bolstered Pakistan's military by supplying the Army with self-propelled howitzers, the Air Force with JF-17 fighter jets, and the Navy with stealth frigates and submarines. It has targeted India by using Pakistan and Myanmar to gain access to the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Seeing politics through the lens of global good groups like QUAD is a relic of Cold War thinking, as it opposes globalization and power realignment. It is China that still wants the World War II winners to sit at the top of the table and refuses to make room for middle-powers such as India, Japan, Australia, and Brazil. For this reason, UNSC reforms have been stalled for the past two decades.

China has demonstrated its middle-kingdom attitude by describing QUAD as a belligerent bloc, in which a fast-expanding Beijing is at the center of the globe and the rest are merely subordinate states. Despite pushing Tokyo on the Senkaku Islands conflict, it does not want Japan to abandon its pacifist policy, just as it does not want Australia to become a submissive producer of beef, pig, cheese, and wine.

In the case of India, China has already shown its expansionist teeth by attempting to unilaterally alter the ground situation in East Ladakh, effectively transforming the undefined Line of Actual Control (LAC) into the Line of Control (LoC). It criticizes India for being dragged into the old Cold War mentality encouraged by the United States in QUAD, but it has no issues enforcing a previously rejected 1959 line on the Ladakh LAC.

In these conditions, the QUAD must press forward with implementing its agenda on the ground in the Indo-Pacific, or risk being accused of talking but not doing. ASEAN countries, which have been on the fence for a long time, will only endorse QUAD if it succeeds in Australia.

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