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Opinion
Australia’s warming ties with China leave its Quad commitments in doubt
- Beijing’s economic coercion drove Australia to seek an alliance in earnest with the US, Japan and India to counter the ‘China threat’
- Now, with the China-Australia trade relationship improving by the day, questions will be raised about Canberra’s commitment to Quad objectives
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Akhil Ramesh is director of the India Programme and Economic Statecraft Initiative at the Pacific Forum.
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) grouping has suffered several deaths in the popular media. Critics have questioned its feasibility, given the partners’ economic dependence on China and their divergent approaches to world affairs. China’s former foreign minister Wang Yi even once dismissed the Quad as dissipating sea foam.
Since then, the grouping – made up of Australia, India, Japan and the United States – has evolved to address a host of global issues, from vaccines to supply chains, rebutting Wang’s characterisation.
Nevertheless, the Quad’s proactiveness is a recent phenomenon. Over the past two years, it has come together to discuss various global issues including Ukraine, critical technology, Covid-19, supply chain resilience and, of course, maritime security. Through the Quad, the bilateral relationships of the four nations have improved and they have found more common ground to increase cooperation. The catalyst to this development was the perceived threat of China.
Particularly for nations such as Australia and India, which have in the past been cautious about taking strong positions against China, the events of the past two years provided an impetus for increased cooperation among the four nations to explicitly address the “China threat”.
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