'Quad' summit backs 'democratic' Indo-Pacific region, cites Chinese 'aggression'
US President Joe Biden, along with the leaders of three major Asia-Pacific countries, an alliance known as the "Quad", discussed "aggression" and "coercion" against members of the group by China in their first summit meeting on Friday.
Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, meeting by means of large flat-screen televisions, discussed China's "coercion of Australia, their harassment around the Senkaku Islands, their aggression on the border with India", US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a briefing in Washington after the talks.
A statement issued by the group called for the region to be "anchored by democratic values" - and for freedom of navigation and overflight as key objectives - while avoiding any direct reference to China. They also announced a "Quad Vaccine Partnership", which will provide financing and other assistance to manufacture and distribute Covid-19 vaccines, a move that comes as Washington faces criticism for hoarding the protective jabs.
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The Quad - shorthand for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue - said in the first of five points in the statement that: "We bring diverse perspectives and are united in a shared vision for the free and open Indo-Pacific. We strive for a region that is free, open, inclusive, healthy, anchored by democratic values, and unconstrained by coercion."
"We support the rule of law, freedom of navigation and overflight, peaceful resolution of disputes, democratic values, and territorial integrity," the statement says later.
"We will continue to prioritise the role of international law in the maritime domain, particularly as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and facilitate collaboration, including in maritime security, to meet challenges to the rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas," they added.
The grouping also pledged to cooperate on combating the effects of climate change in accordance with the Paris Climate Accord; to address Covid-19 within the World Health Organization (WHO); work towards the complete denuclearisation of North Korea; and seek the restoration of democracy in Myanmar.
The "Quad Vaccine Partnership" aims to accelerate the steps needed to end the coronavirus pandemic, according to a fact sheet issued after the announcement.
"Together, Quad leaders are taking shared action necessary to expand safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing in 2021, and will work together to strengthen and assist countries in the Indo-Pacific with vaccination, in close coordination with the existing relevant multilateral mechanisms including WHO," it said.
"We will work together, closer than ever before, for advancing our shared values," Modi said in his opening remarks.
Suga pledged to "firmly advance our cooperation to realise a free and open Indo-Pacific, and to make visible and tangible contributions to the peace stability and prosperity of the region including overcoming Covid-19".
The meeting comes days after Biden released an "interim" national security policy document that stresses the need for Washington to shore up alliances with democratic countries and explicitly calls out China as "the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system".
"Diplomacy is back. Alliances are back," Biden said in the document, an apparent rebuke of the policies of his predecessor Donald Trump, who spent much of his four-year presidency accusing allies in Asia-Pacific, including Tokyo, for not contributing enough to joint military operations in the region.
Each member of the Quad has been trying to manage escalating tensions with Beijing. Biden has so far left in place sanctions that Trump instituted against Chinese government officials and punitive tariffs on the country's imports.
The Chinese coastguard has expanded its presence in the contested waters near the Japanese-controlled Diaoyu Islands, known in Japan as the Senkakus, in the East China Sea. The increased activity follows a new Chinese law that went into effect last month that permits this quasi-military force to use weapons against foreign ships that Beijing regards as illegally entering its waters.
China also unofficially restricted the import of several Australian products, including wine, barley and coal, in November amid deteriorating relations between the two countries, after Canberra called for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
And months of military build-up and construction at the China-India border have caused those relations to plunge, with calls in India for an economic decoupling inflamed by bloody clashes last June in the Galwan Valley that killed at least 20 Indian soldiers - the first casualties at the border since 1975.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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