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C. Uday Bhaskar

The latest Quad summit took place last Saturday in Wilmington, Delaware – the hometown of US President Joe Biden. The leaders of the United States, Australia, India and Japan gathered for a sixth time since 2021 and capped their meeting with a detailed, expansive statement of more than 5,000 words.
The agreements reached ranged from matters related to the Indo-Pacific and maritime domain awareness, to joint port development, cybersecurity and improving interoperability among coastguards. Extending pandemic public health cooperation and seeking a cure for cervical cancer were also included in the summit.
The subtext was to reiterate a point made in every such meeting of the grouping: the Quad is not an “Asian Nato” and its activities are not aimed at any specific nation.
China remains the invisible elephant in the room, often alluded to but not explicitly mentioned by name. It is instructive that the only references to “China” in the lengthy joint statement were by way of the East and South China Seas.
However, the most substantive takeaway from the summit came from an unintended moment. In an audio feed not meant for public consumption, Biden was overheard telling the other leaders that President Xi Jinping was “looking to buy himself some diplomatic space, in my view, to aggressively pursue China’s interest”. He added that China “continues to behave aggressively, testing us all across the region” on several fronts, “including on economic and technology issues”.
Beijing denounced the summit, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian accusing the Quad of being “a tool the US uses to contain China and perpetuate US hegemony”. Lin noted: “Though the US claims that it does not target China, the first topic of the summit is about China and China was made an issue throughout the event. The US is lying through its teeth.”


Linkages between China and the Quad extend as far back as December 2004, when a major tsunami ravaged parts of the Indian Ocean region. India was a first responder in providing humanitarian aid and disaster relief to affected nations, and the US, Japan and Australia soon joined the international aid effort. The seeds of Quad were sown.
The nature of the tsunami response and swift cooperation among the four maritime democracies did not go unnoticed by China. When the US and India sought in 2007 to expand their bilateral naval exercises to strategic talks that also included Australia and Japan, Beijing made vehement protestations and issued démarches – an official diplomatic communication demanding to know the views of the recipient – to each participant. Months after the first Quad meeting, Australia pulled out of the grouping.
Yet the idea of the Quad persisted, remaining dormant until it was revived in 2017. After being elevated to the foreign minister level in 2019, the first virtual Quad summit took place in March 2021 during the Biden administration. The Quad’s importance to Biden is visible in Wilmington being the sixth meeting during Biden’s presidency.
Despite the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump administration began a rewiring of US policy towards China, making the start of US resistance to Beijing’s predatory trade policies and creeping assertiveness in the South China Sea. Biden helped flesh out this policy, and US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin went on to describe China as a “pacing challenge”.
Biden has used the Quad forum to bolster US leverage against China and deal with the Beijing challenge in a larger multilateral framework, and it is evident this strategy has been reasonably effective.
The US president said in Wilmington that, “We’re democracies who know how to get things done. That’s why, within the first days of my presidency, I reached out to each of your nations to propose we elevate the Quad, make it more consequential. Four years later, our four countries are more strategically aligned than ever before.”


China was initially dismissive of the Quad, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi asserting in 2018 that it was nothing more than “sea foam on the Pacific and Indian oceans”. Since then, however, Beijing has become more wary of the grouping and its ability to check China’s advances.
Within the Quad, Australia and Japan are formal treaty allies of the US. This became more robust in recent years with the three-nation Aukus agreement between the US, Britain and Australia which enables Canberra to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. Japan is a major regional ally of the US and has its own anxieties about Chinese territorial aggressiveness.
India is the odd one out in the Quad. It is not a military ally of the US and is unlikely to become one given its long history of non-alignment and New Delhi’s preference to retain its strategic autonomy.


However, if Beijing pursues its territorial assertiveness against Delhi, as it did in 2020 in the Galwan Valley, that could push India towards becoming a more substantial military partner of the US. The Quad could help facilitate this process. Such a shift would have direct implications for China.
India will play a critical role in determining the military tenor of the Indo-Pacific even after Biden hands the baton to his successor in January 2025, with the Quad forming part of his legacy. The last line in the Quad joint statement is instructive: “The Quad is here to stay.”
China is clearly aware of the reality that the Quad is far from sea foam that will quickly dissipate. Instead, there is a deep and abiding undercurrent that will significantly animate the Indo-Pacific in years to come.


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Quad makes it clear to China it’s much more than ‘sea foam’

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While Beijing initially dismissed the notion of the Quad, it now sees the grouping as a formidable force to reckon with in the coming years


While Beijing initially dismissed the notion of the Quad, it now sees the grouping as a formidable force to reckon with in the coming years.


United States

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US-India relations

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Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Quad makes it clear to China it’s much more than ‘sea foam’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}While Beijing initially dismissed the notion of the Quad, it now sees the grouping as a formidable force to reckon with in the coming years

While Beijing initially dismissed the notion of the Quad, it now sees the grouping as a formidable force to reckon with in the coming years