are products of the cold war mentality, and saying organizations and mechanisms like this are doomed to fail. in state media we have seen harsher language. in global times insisting the quad is incapable of inflicting any harm to china because, in their words, the u.s. always abandons its allies like trash when it comes to defending its own interests, but also warning the other three members not to go too far in following the u.s. anti-china push or risk becoming in their words again, canon fodder when china fights back. this kind of rhetoric aside, though, it's really china's increasingly aggressive policies and actions in the region that have been really pushing these four members closer and closer together. and this is especially true on the security front with the chinese people's liberation army, for example, building all those manmade islands and militarizing them and clashing with japan in the east china sea, increasingly intruding into taiwan's air defense zone, not to mention these border