China takes note of Australia joining Malabar naval drills

With Australia now set to join India, Japan and the United States for the Malabar 2020 naval exercise in Indian Ocean, China on Tuesday tacitly disapproved the move to add a military heft to the Quad – a coalition forged by the four democratic nations to contain the communist country in Indo-Pacific region.

“We noticed this development. China believes that military cooperation between countries should be conducive to regional peace and stability,” Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Government, said in Beijing – a day after New Delhi announced participation of Australian Navy in the Malabar 2020 drill to be held in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea later this year.

Read | Australia to be part of Malabar naval drill with India

The annual Malabar Exercise was launched in 1992 as a bilateral drill by the Indian and US navies. It was turned into a multilateral exercise in 2007, with participation of the warships of India, Japan, Australia, Singapore and the US. The multilateral drill took place around the same time when India, Japan, Australia and the US for the first time launched the Quad.

China perceived the twin moves as an initiative to build a coalition to contain it. It issued demarche to all the participants and Australia, Singapore and Japan dragged feet and did not join the drill from the next year. Japan, however, returned to the naval exercise in 2015.

Also Read | What is the Malabar exercise, and why is it significant?

The Quad was re-launched in November 2017, with senior diplomats of the four nations participating in a meeting and calling for “free and open Indo-Pacific” to oppose expansionist moves by China. It was elevated to the level of Foreign Ministers in September 2019. The second ministerial meeting of the four-nation bloc took place in Tokyo on October 6 last.

India of late quietly added military heft to the Quad by inking military logistics sharing agreement with Australia and Japan. It had earlier signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the US in August 2016.