The Quad’s public goods approach: countering the BRI
The Quad’s public goods approach: countering the BRI
WRITTEN BY MUHAMMAD FAIZAL BIN ABDUL RAHMAN
23 March 2023
As the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) went ‘dormant’ in 2008, China began expanding its geopolitical clout. During the 2008 global financial crisis, China launched the biggest stimulus package in the world. This policy drove demand for consumer goods and commodities that helped cushion Asia against the impact of the crisis. In 2010, the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA) came into effect, making China the region’s most important trading partner. After China announced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, it established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2016 as an alternative to Western-led institutions.
While the region welcomed Chinese largesse, China’s growing confidence came with more muscular military activities and economic coercion. China’s geopolitical clout emboldened it to dismiss the region’s concerns about its rejection of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruling. In 2016, the PCA concluded that China’s claims of almost 90 per cent of the South China Sea — including the waters that some Southeast Asian countries claim as their own — have no legal basis. Until today, China continues pursuing its claims in the South China Sea and other strategic areas in the Indo-Pacific.
Against this backdrop, the Quad returned to life in 2017 amid its members’ rising concerns about China’s growing power and influence in the region. Instead of a strategic dialogue that only names and shames China, the Quad expanded its scope in 2021 to become a provider of global public goods such as vaccines, cybersecurity, critical and emerging technologies (CET), and norms on the sustainable use of outer space. These goods, which China has been providing via the BRI, are increasingly salient to the domestic and economic needs of regional countries. By offering alternative sources of these goods, the Quad is taking a soft approach to offset China’s influence in the region.
Even as it coordinates with other Indo-Pacific strategies and the G20, the priority for the Quad should be to make the geopolitical landscape more amenable to engagement with ASEAN.
At the Quad Ministerial Meeting in New Delhi on 3 March 2023, ministers reiterated that the Quad is a force for regional and global good. Furthermore, in a veiled reference to China, the ministers reaffirmed the Quad’s commitment to supporting a free and open Indo-Pacific and opposing unilateral actions that raise tensions in the South and East China Seas.
Competing on meeting regional needs
The Quad’s provision of public goods is a strategy to counter the BRI. By focusing on the region’s needs, it aims to shape the rules of infrastructure development, as well as emerging norms, rules, and standards in CET that would constitute the international order that China seeks to influence through the BRI.
Expectedly, the provision of public goods entails elements of competition. For instance, the Quad aims to work with the digital industry to advance the deployment of open, transparent, and secure 5G networks. This effort includes promoting trusted vendors and using newly developed Open-RAN (Radio Access Network) solutions for wireless networks. Implicitly, promoting trusted vendors means supplanting China’s ‘national champions’ like Huawei, which have a significant market share in Asia. Open-RAN solutions are also an alternative to conventional RAN solutions where Huawei (besides Nokia and Ericsson) has market dominance.
Furthermore, in 2022 the Quad welcomed the Prague Proposals on Telecommunications Supplier Diversity. The proposals’ emphasis on the non-technical aspects of technology supply chains, like “democratic values” and “ethical supplier and transparent financing practices”, aligns well with the Quad’s norms and rules on digital infrastructure development. This emphasis also suggests that technology supply chains are fundamentally insecure if the vendors are beholden to authoritarian governments in their countries of origin (e.g., China). It also suggests a veiled criticism of Chinese tech companies for their purported role in the surveillance of Uighurs in Xinjiang, and of the non-transparent financing model of the BRI that the West accused China of.
The Quad’s image as a coalition for competition — a problem
Despite the Quad’s strong emphasis on providing public goods, it has received a mixed response from the region, especially in Southeast Asia. The recently released ‘The State of Southeast Asia 2023 Survey Report’ by ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute found that only 50.4 per cent of regional respondents agree that the Quad would benefit the region. China’s Global Security Initiative (GSI), a counterweight to the Quad, fared worse though, with only 27.4 per cent of respondents expressing confidence in it. At the recent Munich Security Conference (MSC) 2023, Singapore’s Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said that the “formation of the Quad, AUKUS … missile defence drills in South Korea could all be read as preparation [for] the Chinese”. This statement suggests the region is not only somewhat sceptical about the Quad’s value as a public goods provider but primarily remains worried that the Quad and China’s response to it increase the risk of confrontation. The Quad’s image problem stems from the optics of its revival as a coalition.
At the Quad ministerial meeting in October 2020, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo levelled criticisms against China. Later, in November 2020, the Quad members participated in the naval Exercise Malabar. While speaking in Malaysia during his tour of Southeast Asia in 2020, then Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi depicted the Quad as an “Indo-Pacific NATO”. As China alleged, the public goods approach would force countries to choose sides. Given these assertions, the region may view the Quad more positively than the GSI, but it still sees the Quad’s objective of countering the BRI as contentious. As China is a close neighbour and major trading partner, Southeast Asian countries are inevitably concerned. For example, in 2021, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that the Quad risks provoking China. Similarly, Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan stated in 2018 that Southeast Asian countries do not want to be compelled to choose between China and the Quad.
Southeast Asian countries are concerned about the worsening China-US competition and new minilaterals like the Quad that were born of it. The Quad may contribute positively to regional stability by adjusting the power imbalance vis-à-vis an ascendant China, but it may also be a bellwether for imminent conflict. The Quad may complement the incumbent regional security architecture — which is led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) — by filling gaps in non-traditional security, developmental, and infrastructural needs. However, it may also compete with ASEAN centrality, which entails the grouping’s established leadership role in Asia’s regional architecture. So, although the Quad may increase the options for the region to diversify and reduce dependency on China, the prevalent geopolitical mood hampers the extent to which regional countries can engage with the Quad and vice versa. To assuage regional concerns, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the Quad is not an alliance that exists only to counter China. Moreover, Quad leaders have collectively stated that their informal grouping “is a force for good, committed to bringing tangible benefits to the region”.
Coordinate better to engage the region better
The strategic landscape has become more complicated with a patchwork of Indo-Pacific strategies, which also contain elements of geopolitical competition and the provision of public goods. For example, the European Union’s Indo-Pacific Strategy lists, among other things, the strengthening of rules against economic coercion, green transition, and digital partnerships as priorities. Japan’s ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ vision emphasises connectivity enhancement and quality infrastructure investment, which the G20 endorsed at the 2019 Osaka Summit. It remains to be seen how the Quad would coordinate with these strategies.
Even as it coordinates with other Indo-Pacific strategies and the G20, the priority for the Quad should be to make the geopolitical landscape more amenable to engagement with ASEAN. The landscape may have slightly shifted in the Quad’s favour. Regional views on the Quad, while mixed, have thawed. At the recent Putin-Wang meeting in Moscow, China and Russia — both ASEAN dialogue partners agreed to deepen strategic coordination at multilateral platforms. This development could drive ASEAN to think about how a China-Russia alignment would impact the region and whether it needs to engage the Quad to maintain its neutrality. On this point, ASEAN could note what former Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo said at his recent book launch: “[I]f China presses on us too hard, we should lean a little more in other directions so that China knows that it can’t push us too far. Then we’ll be okay. We’ll be able to maintain a certain dynamic neutrality in Southeast Asia”.
Ideationally, the Quad should take a more technical and ‘ASEAN-first’ approach and less of a ‘democratic values’ approach to promote its initiatives. This might reduce the regional discomfort caused by the US framing of ‘democracy vs. authoritarianism’ against China. Next, the Quad should understand that its focus on rules, norms, and standards is aspirational, but pragmatism drives ASEAN countries’ self-interests. Pushing ASEAN countries to accept this focus without offering practicable infrastructural and developmental alternatives would not work. Strategically, Quad members should coordinate among themselves and with Canada, the EU, and South Korea to leverage their shared position as ASEAN dialogue partners. The follow-on should be Quad members engaging the region more through ASEAN-related mechanisms, focusing on meeting needs rather than addressing a threat. This method takes time, but it preserves ASEAN centrality and may be more palatable than having the Quad formally represented as a partner of ASEAN.
These workarounds are ways for the Quad to coordinate with like-minded partners and engage with ASEAN meaningfully while considering China’s sensitivities, but it requires compromise and patience by all parties. In all likelihood, that might not happen to a sufficient degree as China-US tensions continue to ‘balloon’.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Muhammad Faizal bin Abdul Rahman is a Research Fellow with the Regional Security Architecture Programme at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. His current research interests include the implications of diplomatic, informational, military, and cyber issues on regional security in the Indo-Pacific. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/首相官邸.