India aligns with G7 as Quad deepens ties to counter China's influence

PM Modi's visit also made notable initiatives to bind India closer to the 14-member IPEF, Joe Biden's 2022 initiative to counter growing Chinese influence in the region

Prime Minister Narendra Modi underlined India’s growing alignment with the G7 powers in the last one-to-one meeting and Quad annual summit under United States (US) President Joe Biden, who will demit office in January next year. Both meetings sought to explore ways against growing competition from China, as confirmed by Mr Biden’s hot mic comment to Quad leaders to the effect that China was testing countries in the Asia Pacific. In this respect, the Wilmington Declaration joint statement from Quad leaders reflected not just heightened geopolitical concerns and specific initiatives to address  them but also continued the agenda of deepening ties in broader aspects of the global security architecture, from health care cooperation to joint infrastructure projects and climate change. Several of these programmes are likely to gain clearer shape in 2025, when India hosts the Quad summit.
 

One of the key projects in this respect is the Maritime Initiative for Training in the Indo-Pacific (MAITRI), which builds on a 2022 maritime domain awareness project that offers partner countries information to track activities in their exclusive economic zones (including encroachments and unlawful activities). MAITRI is intended to maximise those tools, with an inaugural workshop to be hosted in India next year. Mumbai will also host a Quad Regional Ports and Transportation conference to build on the grouping’s efforts to support sustainable and resilient port infrastructure across the Indo-Pacific. This is an initiative that draws its creation from China’s incursions into neighbouring maritime domains in the South and East China Seas, for which the readout of the joint statement expresses serious concern. In this respect, the joint statement expends several paragraphs strongly criticising Chinese ally North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. Advancing cooperation in semiconductors, agri-research, cyber security, and space research all find a mention in the document, underlining the increasingly universal nature of the Quad alignment. In a nod to India’s outreach to the Global South, the statement expressed the intention of reforming the United Nations Security Council to make it more inclusive by expanding permanent and non-permanent membership categories. The intention is to include representation for Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean in a reformed Security Council expansion of permanent seats.
 

Mr Modi’s visit also made notable initiatives to bind India closer to the 14-member Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), Mr Biden’s 2022 initiative to counter growing Chinese influence in the region. Unlike Quad partners Japan and Australia, India has chosen to stay out of the 15-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), of which China is a member. But it signed on to two of the four IPEF pillars of Clean and Fair Economy, which aim at, respectively, cooperation on clean energy and climate-friendly technologies and to strengthen measures for anti-corruption and tax transparency. India had ratified the Agreement on Supply Chain Resilience in February this year. Critically, however, it has opted to retain “observer status” on “trade”, the first pillar of the framework. The future of this partnership critically depends on who wins the White House in November. A second term for Donald Trump is likely to put the IPEF in limbo since he has threatened to “knock out” the agreement if he comes to power. Nevertheless, with the Quad, in which India is the sole developing country member, and the IPEF, New Delhi has signalled more clearly where it perceives its geopolitical interests should lie.