Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese chose Sydney, his hometown, for hosting the QUAD Leadership Summit which will be held midway through 2023, news agency the Hindustan Times reported.
The dates of the leadership summit have not been worked out but US President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will travel to Australia to strengthen cooperation between the four nations and collectively thwart Chinese aggression that is impacting the Indo-Pacific region as well as the Asian continent.
India will also host the QUAD Foreign Ministers’ Summit in New Delhi before the leadership summit. The dates for this summit will be announced later.
China considers the QUAD as a NATO-like organization in the Indo-Pacific region and believes that its objectives are anti-Beijing. However, it is due to Chinese attempts to foment instability in Indo-Pacific and Asia and the rest of the world, that these four nations joined hands to address issues arising due to Chinese aggression.
Japan has decided to increase its defence budget and last month said they will meet NATO’s standard of reaching 2% of the GDP within 2027. Australia and the US are now part of two groups – the other being AUKUS – both of which are trying to decrease Chinese influence in the region.
India relations with China remain tense following its army’s violations of border agreements as well. China also irritated the US and India after it raised objections to India-US high altitude warfare exercise in Uttarakhand, the Hindustan Times said in its report.
However, the QUAD nations have refrained from directly attacking China and even does not mention China during its meetings and joint statement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on several occasions said Quad is ‘force for good’.
“Quad is carrying a constructive agenda for the Indo-Pacific region. This will further strengthen the image of the Quad as a ‘Force for Good’,” the Prime Minister said during the previous leadership summit held in Tokyo.
PM Modi said that QUAD continues to focus on areas such as vaccine-delivery, climate action, supply chain resilience, disaster response and economic cooperation and continues to work with other partners for peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.
China is also worried as QUAD nations are working together to set up alternative supply chains as several nations feel working with China exposes them to national security risks.
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