Growing concern that China represents competition for US, says Dhruva Jaishankar

Dhruva Jaishankar, Executive Director, Observer Research Foundation (ORF) said on Tuesday that there is a growing bipartisan consensus in the US on the challenges that China's rise presents to the oldest democracy in a variety of ways.

Washington's new initiative with London and Canberra - known by its acronym "Aukus" - is good news for the Indo-Pacific, including India.

"There is a great concern that China represents competition for the US, and that competition is going to be long term," Dhruva responded to a question whether AUKUS and QUAD are ways of a hardening of attitudes towards China by the US.

On Friday, Biden takes his biggest step toward that goal so far, bringing together in person the leaders of the Quad -- the loose alliance of the United States, Japan, India and Australia that Beijing has called emblematic of a "poisonous" Cold War mentality.

There are some concerns that AUKUS could dilute the strategic cooperation envisaged under the Quad, relegating the quadrilateral grouping to just issues like climate change, Covid-19 vaccines and the like. But Washington has stressed that AUKUS will not detract from either the bilateral cooperation with New Delhi or multilateral ones like the `Quad'.

Talking about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's three-day visit to the US where he will be participating in the first in-person Quad Leaders' summit, Dhruva Jaishankar said, "PM Modi will make his second visit abroad since pandemic. It will be his first meeting with US President Joe Biden after his election."

"All four leaders making time for Quad Summit in their schedules shows the significance of growing coalition," he added.

Quad summit will be held on September 24 at the White House. PM Modi will join Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and US President Joe Biden for the summit.

"We may see some new announcements. People will look for something on climate change and bilateral meetings. This has been a domestic priority for US President Joe Biden," said Dhruva Jaishankar toon Quad Summit.

At the first virtual Quad summit meeting in March, the leaders had decided to form three working groups on critical and emerging technologies, vaccine and global public health and on climate change.

"Major announcement was the creation of vaccine initiative. We may see its implementation and progress towards cooperation on vaccines in progress," said Executive Director, ORF America.

As per Dhruva Jaishankar, there is some expectation that the leaders will have some breakthroughs on critical and emerging technologies.

"There may have been some breakthroughs in critical and emerging technologies that have been reported. We may see something on semiconductor cooperation," said Dhruva Jaishankar toon Quad Summit.

Asked about India balancing groupings like that in the SCO and Quad, Dhruva said that every country looks after its own interests and India is not alone in being part of many different groupings. In fact, even the European countries, Southeast Asian countries are members of various groups.

Some European countries are members of NATO, some of them are members of the European Union, while some countries are members of both and some of neither.

"So I think it's quite common for countries to be part of diverse coalition's often issue-specific coalition's so it makes sense," he said.

( With inputs from ANI )