By: Jianli Yang & Aaron Rhodes – May 17, 2021
As India struggles with highly-infectious variants of the coronavirus and the world tries to lend a helping hand, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rulers are busy exploiting a passing rift between Washington and New Delhi over the Biden administration’s tardiness in committing its help to curb the devastating COVID-19 spike. In doing so, they reveal a deep unease about India’s growing friendship with America, and about the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), an informal alliance between the U.S., Japan, Australia and India that some believe could become a Southeast Asian military alliance.
Chinese state media gleefully mocked India’s tragedy while seeking to sow discord between the two largest democracies. The latest U.S. effort “displays how this so-called political alliance failed to address India’s major concerns,” says a piece published by the state-controlled Global Times. An editorial in the same publication says the U.S. “thinks it should realize immunity [first] and then distribute the inferior vaccines to other countries while the latter must be grateful for such U.S. ‘goodness’ and jointly help safeguard the ‘American First’ order,” referencing what China apparently claims to be President Biden’s continuation of former President Trump’s governing political philosophy.
On April 24, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters that India had received little help from the other three countries of the Quad and that China could provide the support India needs, a renewed effort by Beijing to disrupt the partnership that many consider key to countering China’s growing ideological and geopolitical influence…. [Continue Reading]
Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/553448-why-the-quad-should-morph-into-a-treaty-based-economic-alliance