China continues to assert its dominance over the South China Sea, but Japan and other Asian nations are contesting it.
China continues to assert its dominance over the South China Sea, but Japan and other Asian nations are contesting it.

Australia will commit AU$18 million to set up a new cable connectivity and resilience center in a bid to help undersea cable networks that will boost prosperity and security in the Indo-Pacific region, Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced at the Quad Foreign Ministers meeting on Monday.

Wong announced establishing the center while meeting her counterparts from Japan, U.S. and India at the Quad foreign ministers' meet in Tokyo, The Guardian reported.

The center will be staffed by Australian public servants and work with individual Pacific nations.

After the meeting, a joint statement made by Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Wong expressed concern at the intimidating maneuvers in the South China Sea and pledged support to free and open Indo-Pacific, based on the international order.

Quad nations having been assisting Pacific countries in improving the infrastructure and maritime surveillance and preventing China from having a stronger hold in the region.

"Countries face coercive trade measures, unsustainable lending, political interference and disinformation," Wong said at the Quad meeting, as she pointed to the conflict within the region that is costing lives.

To focus on international law of the sea, the leaders stated that they will launch a maritime legal dialogue, the Associated Press reported.

Other initiatives included setting up a telecommunications network in Palau and building cybersecurity capacity in the Philippines and India.

"We are committed to putting our collective resources, our collective strength to work to benefit people across the region that we share," Blinken told reporters. "We continue to work with partners to ensure that freedom of navigation, overflight, the unimpeded flow of lawful maritime commerce that these continue to go forward. They are critical to the region's security. They're critical to its ongoing prosperity."

The latest announcement is an attempt at restoring Australia to be the "partner of choice" for Pacific nations and to block the growing Chinese influence in the region.