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Context:
- The four Quad countries, Australia, India, Japan and the U.S., pushing back the China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and are working to establish a joint regional infrastructure scheme as an alternative to the same
Challenging China:
- As a pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping, the BRI is aimed at situating Beijing at the core of the global economy by building global transport links across the world.
- China with its BRI is providing a new economic template to the world, and it is important for those powers which view Beijing’s approach as top-down, opaque and self serving to pro-actively provide credible alternatives.
- The scale and scope of the Chinese economic footprint can only be tackled if the Quad nations combine forces.
- Unlike the military option, this is a softer side of the “Quad” engagement and its members are already undertaking connectivity projects around the world.
- India and Japan, for example, are working on an ambitious Asia-Africa Growth Corridor linking Southeast Asia to Africa.
Pushing back BRI:
- The biggest concern about the BRI is that it is a means of Chinese economic hegemony and, in the process, it challenges the foundations of the existing liberal economic order.
- While underlining their support for the need for global and regional connectivity in principle, the Quad members have been pushing back.
- India’s opposition has been the strongest partly because the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is a part of the BRI, passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. India was the only major power which did not attend the BRI summit hosted by China last May.
- Japan has laid down specific conditions for its participation in the BRI even as it is looking to use its official development assistance to promote a broader “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy” including “high-quality infrastructure”.
- Australia has challenged the principles which frame the BRI.
Conclusion:
- Beijing has already expressed its unhappiness at the emergence of the “Quad” and will see moves to counter the BRI as an attempt to shift the balance of power in the wider Indo-Pacific.
- China’s worries will only increase as the combined might of these four powers is quite formidable.
