Prime Minister Narendra Modi was hosted by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for a quiet “tempura” meal – a Japanese dish usually consisting of seafood and vegetables deep-fried in batter – before departing for India after attending the QUAD summit in Tokyo. Both countries decided to strengthen economic cooperation.
According to reports from Tokyo, PM Modi was pleased with his QUAD and bilateral meetings in Tokyo, with Japan enthusiastic about economic opportunities in India and a shared agenda under the QUAD umbrella. PM Modi, who has been a long-time admirer of Japanese culture, discipline, and development since his days as Gujarat’s chief minister, met three former Japanese prime ministers in addition to the current one and interacted with 40 CEOs of major Japanese corporations during his brisk visit. Both countries are interested in each other, as evidenced by bilateral meetings with PM Kishida, with the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and Maritime Domain Awareness being the new dimensions for deepening engagement under QUAD.
“The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is essentially a free trade agreement under a different name because the US is unable to sign the latter due to congressional opposition. “India will benefit because it is a founding member and has uniquely distanced itself from any multilateral trade engagement with China as a member,” according to a former foreign secretary.
While QUAD has advocated for a free and open Indo-Pacific, it has also developed a maritime domain awareness platform to monitor and alert on illegal, unregulated, and unprotected fishing by “dark” vessels in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The maritime surveillance initiative will be based in QUAD and ASEAN countries to ensure that Chinese trawlers fishing in the region are not only monitored but also prevented by alerting the relevant countries. The initiative is a rebuke to Beijing’s muscle-flexing in the Indo-Pacific, which accounts for 80 to 95 percent of illegal fishing in the region after overfishing in its own waters.
While the maritime initiative has an illegal fishing component, it also has a security component, as all vessels in the Indo-Pacific will be monitored to ensure that member nations in the South and East China Seas do not violate UN Laws of Seas. “The Chinese trawlers are practically rapping the Indo-Pacific by illegal fishing and hitting the economies of small island nations in the region by unregulated fishing,” according to a former Indian Navy Admiral.
Despite the fact that China and Russia both exercised nuclear bombers in the Sea of Japan on the day the QUAD leaders met in Tokyo, the democratic leaders were unfazed by the drama and have decided to band together to protect the Indo-Pacific.
