The Japanese capital of Tokyo is all set to host the second in-person meeting of the Quad member countries and the leaders of India, United States and Australia have already arrived in the host country. US president Joe Biden was the first to arrive while Indian prime minister Narendra Modi arrived on Monday morning. Newly elected Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese will also be attending the meeting after his election win with Japanese PM Fumio Kishida hosting the leaders.
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This is the fourth meeting between the countries in two years and the tone for this year’s meeting has already been set with the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Forum. The framework will begin with 13 members who account for a combined 40 per cent of the world gross domestic product.
The members who will be a part of the Indo-Pacific Economic Forum are the United States, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei. This is being seen as an alternative to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world’s largest trade bloc established earlier by China.
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Incidentally, 11 out of the 13 countries are already part of the RCEP framework.
However, the IPEF is not a traditional free trade agreement as the United States are not in favour of them and the Biden administration have faced a lot of pressure when it comes to signing these kinds of agreements. As a result, the framework will focus primarily on increasing economic integration.
China has not taken the developments well and they have criticized the new framework while calling it a ‘closed group’. China was also quite critical of a possible agreement between the Quad members to use satellites for surveillance in the contested waters of the South China Sea to stop illegal fishing.
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