Resurgent Quad puts China on a new defensive edge

MANILA – This week, US President Joe Biden hosted for the last time his counterparts from Japan, Australia and India for the fourth Quad Leaders’ Summit.

Flanked by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio of Japan and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India in his home state of Delaware, the US leader zeroed in on institutionalizing cooperation and the supposed threats posed by China.

“China continues to behave aggressively, testing us all across the region, and it’s true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South China, South Asia and the Taiwan Straits,” Biden told his fellow Quad leaders.  

“At least from our perspective, we believe Xi Jinping is looking to focus on domestic economic challenges and minimize the turbulence in China diplomatic relationships, and he’s also looking to buy himself some diplomatic space, in my view, to aggressively pursue China’s interest,” Biden said during the high-level meeting in a hot-mic moment.

Although more measured in their joint statement, the four powerful democratic leaders announced a series of new initiatives with a growing focus on quality infrastructure development, cybersecurity, semiconductors and, most crucially, maritime security.

In particular, they announced inaugural joint coast guard operations for 2025, regardless of who takes over the White House after the November elections, and promised to enhance military logistics coordination by expanding on the earlier Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness.

Although Quad leaders tried to portray the event as a more comprehensive and constructive gathering, Beijing was quick to criticize and even condemn aspects of the meeting. On the one hand, the state-backed Global Times tried to dismiss the grouping as too “loose” and informal to make any dent in the global and regional balance of power.

At the same time, the same nationalist newspaper also featured Chinese experts who accused the Quad of inciting “bloc confrontation” and adopting a Cold War-style mindset at the expense of regional security in Asia.

In a press conference earlier this year, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian was reported as accusing the four partner nations of “scaremongering, inciting antagonism and confrontation, and holding back other countries’ development.”

China seems to have been particularly piqued by Quad’s growing focus on maritime security and its increasingly sharp criticism of the Asian power’s actions in adjacent waters.

In a thinly veiled criticism of Beijing, the leaders of the US, Japan, Australia and India raised “serious concern about the situation in the East and South China Seas.”

In particular, the US and its allies are alarmed by the perilous “new normal” of constant clashes and near-clashes between Manila and Beijing in the South China Sea in recent months.

Although not a claimant state nor a US treaty ally, India has become more involved in regional maritime disputes by publicly siding with and arming the Philippines with modern weapons systems, including its potent supersonic BrahMos missiles.

At times, Indian officials have even used the term “West Philippine Sea” to describe Manila’s areas of claim in the disputed South China Sea waters.

As for Japan, it’s directly involved in maritime disputes with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea. Crucially, Tokyo is also expanding its security cooperation with Manila – most recently by signing a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) with a growing focus on contingencies in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.

For Australia, it’s a US treaty ally with tight security cooperation with both Japan and the Philippines under a Status of Forces Agreement. Both Japan and Australia have also been involved in recent quadrilateral naval patrols with the Philippines and the US in the South China Sea.

But the escalating situation is particularly alarming for Washington, which shares a Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) with the Philippines that many fear could soon be put to the test against China.

Following multiple near-clashes and direct collisions between Chinese and Filipino maritime forces in recent months, the US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) offered, in a first, direct assistance in joint resupply missions to hotly contested features such as the Second Thomas Shoal, which houses a de facto Philippine military base.

After several rounds of bilateral negotiations, including the recently concluded Bilateral Consultation Mechanism high-level meeting in Beijing, the Philippines and China managed to de-escalate tensions over the Second Thomas and Sabina shoals.

Upon closer examination, however, there is every indication that the South China Sea disputes have entered an unstable and dangerous “new normal.”

After weeks of relative calm, with no major incidents involving Chinese and Philippine maritime forces, tensions have once again built up over the Second Thomas Shoal in recent days.

According to Philippine authorities, between September 17-23, China deployed as many as 251 vessels, representing a new milestone in China’s “gray zone” swarming tactics in the disputed maritime area.

“This time, this is the biggest increase we’ve seen,” Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, the Philippine Navy spokesperson for the South China Sea, told reporters this week.

“If we notice, the total number of maritime militia vessels in the entire South China Sea could be approximately 350 to 400…If they bring all of this to one particular country, it’s within the force projection capability,” he added, warning of a dangerous surge in China’s presence across disputed waters at the expense of smaller claimant states.

So far, China has strictly stuck to its non-lethal gray zone tactics, including the frequent ramming and water cannoning of smaller Philippine vessels. Any “armed attack” against Philippine troops or boats would automatically trigger American military intervention under the two sides’ mutual defense treaty.

Nevertheless, China has effectively leveraged its preponderance of force and massive fleet, currently the largest on earth, to determine the tempo and coordinates of maritime contestation across the South China Sea.

From Beijing’s perspective, its true rivals are not smaller claimant states such as the Philippines, which has a modernizing yet still limited fleet of warships, but rather the US and the broader Quad.

China believes it is facing nothing less than a Washington-orchestrated “containment” strategy in tandem with a network of regional treaty allies and strategic partners, most notably India.

For Chinese analysts, the Quad is playing a “detrimental role of fomenting confrontation and inciting geopolitical tensions in [the] Asia-Pacific.”

“‘Targeting China’ is not only at a strategic level but it also involves tactical arrangements and specific plans,” Ding Duo, deputy director of the Institute of Maritime Law and Policy at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, told the Global Times.

Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the same newspaper that the Quad is “US-led and serves as a strategic tool to favor the US in its competition with China at both regional and global levels.”

Increasingly, even senior Chinese officials have adopted similarly strident criticism of the Quad, reflecting growing worries in Beijing over its coalescing new Cold War with the West.

“Quad keeps chanting the slogan of a free and open Indo-Pacific, and all the while, it has been scaremongering, inciting antagonism and confrontation, and holding back other countries’ development,” underscoring Beijing’s threat perceptions towards the quadrilateral grouping.

“[The Quad] runs counter to the overwhelming trend of pursuing peace, development, cooperation, and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific and will by no means gain any support,” Chinese spokesperson Lin said at a press conference earlier this year. China “firmly opposes the bloc confrontation they incite in the name of ‘anti-coercion’, and the imposition of their house rules in the name of maintaining order.”

Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on X at @Richeydarian