Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison meets with US President Joe Biden at the UN ahead of a Quad regional meeting in the White House in September 2021.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison meets with US President Joe Biden at the UN ahead of a Quad regional meeting in the White House in September 2021. AFP / Brendan Smialowski

The Biden administration, like the Trump dispensation before it, has no wish to allow China to achieve parity with the U.S. on the world stage.

At the fourth QUAD foreign ministers' meeting in Melbourne Feb. 11, involving the US, Australia, India, and Japan, vaccine delivery, critical and emerging technologies, and the global security environment - all aimed at China -- will be discussed and will be put into action.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne is hosting her counterparts from three vital nations where they will "exchange views on regional strategic issues given their shared vision of a free, open, and inclusive Indo-Pacific region," said India's foreign ministry ahead of the Melbourne meeting.

While India did not mention China, US officials said that the QUAD would discuss "challenges that China poses."

The QUAD Foreign Ministers' meet will be followed by the second QUAD leaders' summit which may take place with the US president's Asia visit, slated for May this year.

Started as a humanitarian mission in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami that killed 227,898 people, QUAD has since then morphed into a significant forum with important ramifications on geopolitics.

Till 2017, the QUAD was restricted to the foreign secretary-level, which was raised to the foreign ministers in 2019 and the summit level in 2021.

This is the third in-person meeting of foreign ministers, following Tokyo in October 2020 and the inaugural meeting in September 2019 in New York City. They met virtually in February 2021.

Under the QUAD Vaccine Partnership announced in March 2021, the foreign ministers will discuss the plan to donate more than 1.2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses globally and produce at least 1 billion doses by the end of 2022.

Leveraging India's manufacturing capacity, Japan will provide soft loans to expand production capacity in India, and Australia will give the last-mile delivery support.

As of now, the Indo-Pacific region has the largest unvaccinated population in the world. There is a vacuum in the region being filled up largely by Chinese supplies.

To counterbalance China's presence and its health diplomacy, the QUAD vaccine diplomacy will unveil a comprehensive healthcare plan, the equivalent to the Malabar naval exercise, involving the navies of the QUAD members.

There is a palpable churning taking place in geoeconomics; with the relocation of global supply chains that began with the US-China trade war under the Trump administration in 2018. The aim is to put in place a QUAD-led global supply chain network which allows less room for China in critical areas like minerals, semiconductors, telecommunications equipment, and undersea cables.

The QUAD group is now keen on shedding its limited purpose image and wants to counter Chinese influence in technology spheres ranging from rare earth elements to the undersea cable. They hope to make QUAD an ideal platform for digital economies, which are taking shape in the Indo-Pacific. Here too, the aim is to isolate China by erecting a network of trusted vendors who subscribe to democratic values in place of Chinese communist values.

The Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group established in March 2021 by the QUAD will spearhead the global governance of technologies, including data governance, cyber norms, and 5G standards.

The growing synergy between QUAD navies has been all too evident since Malabar exercises in the Bay of Bengal in November 2020. Since then, there have been a series of multilateral naval engagements between the Quad members. With equipping Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, apprehensions about the Quad and its military mission were vindicated.

At the Feb. 11 meeting, the QUAD ministers will talk about the Ukraine crisis and Chinese emerging proximity to Russia, and its belligerence over renegade province Taiwan. Repeated missile launches by North Korea and the coup in Myanmar would also dominate the Quad agenda.

China has repeatedly flayed the QUAD as a Cold War construct, targeting other countries.

Currently, the QUAD has ruled out adding new members to the group. Maybe the foursome is expecting their diplomatic efforts to gain ground before expanding the Asian NATO which will put pressure on Beijing to accept the second-class status in world affairs or run the risk of an armed conflict.