Amid China’s growing influence, members of the Quad countries – the US, India, Japan and Australia – are working to arrange the first meeting of their leaders, according to media reports.
This comes as the US President Joe Biden’s new administration has expressed its eagerness to build on renewed attention to the grouping of the four major Indo-Pacific democracies. National security adviser Jake Sullivan even called it “a foundation upon which to build substantial American policy in the Indo-Pacific”.
According to a source, the US has already proposed to other countries the idea of holding an online meeting of the Quad leaders.
During the envisioned meeting, the Quad members are expected to discuss cooperation for the realisation of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” amid concerns over China’s maritime assertiveness in the region.
For the first time under the Quad framework, the foreign ministers of the four countries met in New York in 2019. The four countries held another meeting last year in Tokyo during the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the October meeting, then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reprimanded China for using its economic power to increase its hegemony over the neighbouring countries in South Asia.
Pompeo brought to the forum a denunciation of China’s “exploitation, corruption, and coercion” of neighbouring countries.
“This is for the soul of the world. This is about whether this will be a world that operates in this sense that we’re on a rules-based international order system or one that’s dominated by a coercive totalitarian regime like the one in China,” he said.