Encirclement of China

Context: 

Recently, China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang accused the United States of attempting “to encircle China” through its Indo-Pacific strategy, taking aim at what he called “exclusive blocs” led by the U.S.

Chinese claims:

• The U.S. ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’ seeks to gang up to form exclusive blocs, stir up confrontation, and undermine regional integration.
• The ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’ claims to safeguard regional security, but in fact it provokes confrontation and seeks to create an Asia-Pacific version of NATO.
• The real purpose of its Indo-Pacific strategy is to encircle China.
• Chinese officials have previously referred to the India, U.S., Australia, Japan Quad grouping as well as the AUKUS (Australia-U.K.-U.S.) defence pact as being key elements of this strategy.

About NATO:

• It is a military alliance established by the North Atlantic Treaty (also called the Washington Treaty) of April, 1949, by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.
• There are currently 30 member states.
• Its original members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
• Headquarters: Brussels, Belgium.

Quad

• Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) is the informal strategic dialogue between India, USA, Japan and Australia.
• The four nations share a common objective to ensure and support a “free, open and prosperous” Indo-Pacific region.
• The idea of Quad was first mooted by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007. The Quad was supposed to establish an Asian Arc of Democracy.

AUKUS

• It is a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, announced in 2021 for the Indo-Pacific region.
• To transfer technology to build a fleet of at least eight nuclear-powered submarines armed with conventional weapons.
• The pact is also seen as a deterrence to China’s aggression in the Pacific region.
• The pact also includes cooperation on advanced cyber, artificial intelligence and autonomy, quantum technologies, undersea capabilities, hypersonic and counter-hypersonic, electronic warfare, innovation and information sharing.

News Source: The Hindu