The United States, Japan, Australia and India will unveil a maritime initiative to tackle illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific on Tuesday, a US official said, in the latest effort by the “Quad” to counter Chinese activity in the region.

President Joe Biden and the other Quad leaders – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and newly elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – will announce the initiative at a summit in Tokyo, according to the official, who alleged that China was responsible for 95% of illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific.

The initiative will use satellite technology to connect existing monitoring centers in Singapore, India and the Pacific to create a system to track illegal fishing from the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia to the Pacific. South, according to the official.

The system will allow the United States and its partners to monitor illegal fishing even when fishing boats have turned off transponders that are typically used to track maritime vessels.

“We will provide a global capability that will link systems together to be able to track illegal browsing for the first time,” the official said.

“China has become the biggest perpetrator of illegal fishing in the world,” said Charles Edel, Australian chair of CSIS, a think tank. “They have significantly depleted global fish stocks and undermined the traditional livelihoods of many countries, so any action taken to track, identify and curb such activity would have environmental and security benefits for the region.”

The United States sees the initiative as part of a broader strategy to reduce growing dependence on China by a number of small Pacific island nations.

“We simply ask people in the region to remember that the United States and our partners and allies have been the partner of choice in implementing security and peace since the end of World War II,” said a US State Department official, who added that Washington was “deepening our relationship with the region” to counter China.

He said the United States would help in everything from educating girls to teaching science and English. He would also find ways to help them protect their marine resources and democratic institutions.

“America has tools, and collectively others too, that can help them achieve what they want,” the official said. “What most of them want is not a military base with the People’s Republic of China.”

The other official said the United States was developing a multi-faceted strategy ranging from increased commitment to aid in the fight against climate change, which poses an existential threat to some Pacific island countries.

He said the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and France would soon launch an initiative called “Pacific Partners” to help Pacific island nations. .

The official added that the United States was also talking to Fiji to draw them “more closely into the emerging economic architecture that the United States is designing.” Biden will launch an “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” on Monday to strengthen economic engagement with countries in Asia.

The new maritime initiative comes as the United States and its allies fear that Beijing is negotiating a security pact with Kiribati, a nation of 33 islands that stretch about 3,000 km along the North Pacific divide. and South, as the Financial Times reported on Friday. .

The United States was alarmed this year when China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands. Some experts believe this could pave the way for China to build a naval base and project its power further into the Pacific.

Gregory Poling, head of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at CSIS, said Chinese military access to Kiritimati (Christmas Island) or other eastern Kiribati islands would be much more serious than the Solomons.

“Not only are they relatively close to Hawaii, but under the Treaty of Tarawa, the United States has agreed to relinquish its claims to these islands on condition that Kiribati does not allow any third party to rely on them without consulting the United States,” Poling said. .

Speaking about China’s efforts to bring Pacific island nations together, the top US official said they marked a much more ambitious strategy that required Washington to “significantly step up our game.”

“China has done a lot of things in the Pacific that are kind of old wine in new bottles. I don’t believe that’s what we’re dealing with,” he said.

“It’s a sea change in their ambition. And it’s a direct challenge that we in the West, as countries that have long-standing interests in the Pacific, must take up.

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