Quad countries make thinly veiled swipe at China
The leaders of the Quad group – Australia, India, Japan and the United States – delivered a thinly veiled swipe at Beijing’s behaviour on Saturday at a summit in Hiroshima.
The US president, Joe Biden, and his three partners in the group did not mention China by name but the communist superpower was clearly the target of language in a joint statement calling for “peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific maritime domain”.
The Quad leaders held their meeting while already gathered in Hiroshima for a Group of 7 summit.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had been meant to host Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Sydney next week.
However, Biden pulled out, saying he had to return to Washington from Japan on Sunday to negotiate with Republican opponents on the US debt ceiling.
Biden apologised for forcing the change in plans and has invited Albanese to make a state visit to the White House.
In their statement, they stressed the Quad’s support for infrastructure improvements across the vast Asia-Pacific region, while saying, in another apparent dig at China, that they wanted to assist such investments but would “not impose unsustainable debt burdens” on the recipients of assistance.
Also at the G7, French president Emmanuel Macron and Italian PM Giorgia Meloni sought to turn the page after a French minister accused Rome of mishandling an influx of migrants.
Among the projects the Quad leaders highlighted was the “urgent need to support quality undersea cable networks in the Indo-Pacific, which are key to global growth and prosperity”. They announced a partnership aiming to draw on their countries’ expertise in the specialist maritime cable sector.
