Australia announced that it will spend 3.9 billion Australian dollars (nearly 3 billion US dollars) to "advance" with the construction of a nuclear submarine shipyard under the trilateral AUKUS program, Reuters reported.
AUKUS (from A for Australia, UK for the United Kingdom and US for the United States) is a nuclear submarine pact concluded by Australia, Britain and the United States in 2021, under which Australia will arm itself with warships from the next decade onwards to counter China's ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region, the world agency said.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese identified the aforementioned amount as the first tranche for the new shipyard in Osborne, a suburb of Adelaide in the state of South Australia.
"The investment in the Osborne submarine shipyard is strategic for arming Australia with conventional nuclear submarines", Albanese said in a statement.
According to official plans, the total investment is 30 billion Australian dollars, which will be given "in the coming decades", the prime minister said.
Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand met with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, China's Xinhua news agency reported.
Wang Yi welcomed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who visited China last month. China's top diplomat called the visit "productive".
Carney's visit to China proves that the current Canadian government is pursuing a new policy towards Beijing, Wang said, quoted by Xinhua.
Anand, in turn, said that the prime minister's visit was "a great success" and has ushered in a new era in Canadian-Chinese relations.