India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has dismissed China’s vehement opposition to the Quad which sees this organisation as a grouping to “smear, oppress and contain China’s development”.
However, Jaishshankar said that the Quad is a grouping that will do “positive things” and contribute to the prosperity and stability of the strategic Indo-Pacific region, and criticising it repeatedly will not make the four-nation grouping less credible.
Jaishankar who just met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Japan’s Yoshimasa Hayashi and Australia’s Marise Payne – on Friday vowed to expand cooperation to keep the Indo-Pacific free from “coercion” and as China is getting more assertive and aggressive in the Indo-Pacific region.
“All four of us yesterday, the two of us and Blinken and Hayashi, as well, made that point that we are here to do positive things. We are here to contribute to the peace, prosperity, and stability of the region,” Jaishankar said while speaking at a joint press conference along with his Australian counterpart here.
“Our record and our actions and stances is fairly clear and by criticising it repeatedly, it doesn’t make us less credible,” he asserted.
China has territorial disputes with almost all its neighbors but for the last few years, it has been trying very hard to break into the Indo-Pacific region and it views Quad as an alliance that is anti-China and called the Quad alliance between the US, India, Australia, and Japan as a “tool” to contain China’s rise and to maintain American hegemony.
“China believes that the so-called Quad group cobbled together by the US, Japan, India and Australia is essentially a tool for containing and besieging China to maintain US hegemony. It aims to stoke confrontation and undermine international solidarity and cooperation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian said in Beijing in response to a question on the Quad grouping.
“I want to stress that as the Cold War is long over, the attempt to forge a so-called alliance to contain China wins no support and leads nowhere,” he said.
Australian foriegn minister Payne said the Quad is “not against anything and “We’re about building, about building confidence and resilience, about promoting a region in which all countries are able to be and feel sovereign and secure without the threat of coercion or intimidation. We have a really practical agenda, which as evidenced by our support of access to vaccines, indeed over 500 million vaccines delivered under the Quad leaders commitments on vaccination.
“And it is all about helping to positively shape our region as indeed it develops and grows, and Australia has welcomed the development and growth of China over the years. But we have always said that we will also act in protection of our national interests as any sovereign nation would,” the minister said.
The need for the Quad which was in the working for many years emerged to keep the critical sea routes in the Indo-Pacific free of any influence, amidst China’s growing military presence in the strategic region.
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