U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (front right) with Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi on March 20, 2021. (PHOTO BY MONEY SHARMA/AFP via Getty Images)
Austin, who arrived in India on March 19 for a three-day visit, called the U.S.-India partnership a “central pillar” of U.S. Indo-Pacific policy. In a statement, the Pentagon said India and the United States are working to develop a partnership to protect the security of the Indo-Pacific region.
Both the Quad and Austin’s New Delhi trip were dominated by talk of the Chinese Communist Party. Austin did not directly name the Chinese Communist Party, but he told a group of journalists who accompanied him to India, “I think that working together with like-minded countries that share common interests is the best strategy you can have to be able to check your enemies in any region.”
Meanwhile, in a joint statement at the quadripartite talks, the four leaders emphasized an Indo-Pacific region “based on democratic values and free from coercion,” pointing the finger at the Chinese Communist Party.
Since the new U.S. administration began to define its policy toward China, expressing its desire to maintain the status quo of the Quadripartite talks, the Chinese Communist media has tried to downplay the Quadripartite talks and cautioned India not to lose its strategic autonomy because of its partnership with the United States.
While the Quartet seeks a “free, open, facilitated, pluralistic and prosperous” Indo-Pacific region, the Chinese Communist Party has sought to unite Pakistan and Russia, and its official media and think tanks have published reports and op-eds against the Quartet, particularly on India’s central role in the Quartet.
“Russia is concerned that India is slowing down its defense purchases from Moscow in favor of Washington, which is to be expected. India and the U.S. are moving closer together in a defense and security alliance.” Madhav Das Nalapat, vice chairman of the Manipal Advanced Research Group and editorial director of ITV Media, told The Epoch Times in an email.
He said the Chinese Communist Party wants India to continue its previous non-aligned foreign policy of staying out of the game between the two superpowers “so that if Beijing decides to launch a major attack on its own or with Pakistan, there will be no other country to help India.”
Jeff Smith, a South Asia fellow at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, told the Epoch Times that the Communist Party, Pakistan and Russia do not appear to have a coordinated overall strategy to counter the quadrilateral alliance.
“Both the Chinese Communist Party and Russia have criticized the quadripartite talks in public and tried unsuccessfully to persuade India not to join the group, while the Pakistani government has not commented much publicly.” He said.
Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece sings back at Quad
Ian Hall, deputy director of the Griffith Asia Institute in Brisbane, told the Epoch Times in an email that the Chinese Communist Party will try to “split the Quad talks and undermine coordination.
In an analysis published early last year by the Observer Research Foundation of India, Chen Chen Chen, a researcher and vice president of the Institute for Economic Reform and Development of Mainland China at Renmin University of China, wrote that when Xi Jinping first came to power, he called on Communist Party agencies and government diplomats to tell a good “China story.
According to Chen, there are more than 2,000 think tanks in mainland China that work with the CCP’s overseas media, overseas-supported think tanks, Chinese companies and overseas Chinese to build the CCP’s overseas diplomacy.
Taken together, experts refer to these institutions and individuals as the CCP’s lobbyists. In today’s context, the CCP’s lobbyists are working against the Four-Power Talks.
A search for the topic “four countries” on the website of the Global Times, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, lists more than 15 reports published by the outlet around the Time of the March 12 summit. All of the reports centered on the central thesis that all members of the Quartet, especially India, would be economically ruined.
In conjunction with Austin’s visit, the Global Times published an opinion piece headlined “India, with Dreams of great power, will not be relegated to the status of a US henchman like Japan.
Narapat said the Chinese Communist Party was trying to say that India should remain neutral and autonomous, which means India should go it alone in its confrontation with the Chinese Communist Party.
“By forming an alliance like Beijing and Washington did during the Soviet-American Cold War 1.0, India is not ‘downgrading’. It is an autonomous exercise of India’s self-interest to protect itself, which in the case of New Delhi means forming an alliance with Washington to stop the Sino-Russian alliance from dominating the Indo-Pacific region.” He said.
In an analysis published March 16 by Alexander Yakovenko, director of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, the Russian Council on International Affairs spoke of the highly competitive emerging environment between East and West and defined the United States as the instigator of old geopolitical confrontations.
Yakovenko defines the India-Pakistan issue in Kashmir, the India-China issue in the Himalayas and South China, and the East China Sea issue as local issues.
Narapat said India joined the quadrilateral talks for its own national interests and that Kashmir and terrorism are not mere local issues for India.
“Kashmir and terrorism are important for India. Yakovenko has forgotten that the Chinese Communist Party is helping Pakistan against India.” He said in response to Yakovenko’s comments.
Zamir Ahmad Awan, a former Pakistani diplomat and professor at the National University of Science and Technology in Islamabad, wrote in an analysis published on RIAC’s website that the quadrilateral talks have widened the distance between India and Russia, which did not hold an annual summit last year for the first time in its history.
“Moscow conveyed serious concerns about New Delhi joining the Indo-Pacific Initiative and the quadripartite talks, as India thereby leaned more toward the United States.” Awan said. Awan is also an invited fellow at the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization (CCG), a think tank on globalization.
“By joining the Quad, …… India is fully on the side of the United States, which is in opposition to its close allies in China (Communist Party of China), Russia and Pakistan.”
Is the Quad an Asian NATO?
An opinion piece published in the Global Times on the day of the Quad Summit online defined the alliance as an “Asian NATO” and said the Quad could not replicate NATO because of the economic influence of the Communist Party in the region and “the internal divisions of the four countries.
Smith said the comparison between the Quadripartite talks and NATO in Asia is not particularly helpful.
“The Quadripartite talks are not a formal treaty alliance, and it does not have a dedicated purpose or a dedicated bureaucracy. ‘Asian NATO’ is often the description used by critics of the Quadripartite organization, and although NATO is a unique military alliance system, it is considered by experts to be the most successful alliance organization in modern history.” He said.
“‘Asian NATO’ has been called a demon by some and generally implies that the Quadripartite talks are an overly militarized organization designed to contain the rise of Communist China. Given New Delhi’s historical aversion to treaty alliances, being demonized is being used to warn India against getting too close to the Quadripartite grouping.” Both criticisms have proved unconvincing, he said.
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