China says Quad is a ‘bloc’ for confrontation

China on Wednesday lambasted against the upcoming Quad Foreign Ministers' meeting on Friday and accused the members, including India and US, of creating a bloc confrontation and having a “cold war mentality.” In a media briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the four-nation alliance should stop driving wedges between regional countries.Opposing the Quad in strong words, the Chinese foreign ministry said as a “bloc”, it was trying to trigger confrontation unlike China, which stands for peace and development. The ministry accused the US of forming “blocs” and attempting to force its “style” of democracy.

The foreign ministers from the four countries will be participating in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue in Melbourne on Friday. India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that it will be an opportunity for the ministers to follow up on their virtual meeting held in February last year and exchange views on regional strategic issues given their shared vision of a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific regionIndian external affairs minister S Jaishankar will join his counterparts from Australia, Japan and the US for a meeting under the Quad mechanism in Melbourne on February 10-11; the meeting is expected to set the agenda for the Quad leaders’ summit in Japan later this year.

The consensus in Beijing is that the four countries came together to counter China’s increasing influence and to flex their diplomatic muscle in the dispute-ridden South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific region. In 2018, Chinese state councillor and foreign minister Wang Yi had described the Quad as “...seafoam in the Pacific or the Indian Ocean: they may get some attention, but soon will dissipate”. By 2020, Wang came around to acknowledge that the Quad had become a “security threat” and a so-called Indo-Pacific “New Nato”.