UNESCO announced Monday that the United States plans to rejoin the U.N. agency  after a decade-long dispute sparked by the organization’s move to include Palestine as a member.

Afghan Voice Agency (AVA) - Monitoring: Washington privately contacted UNESCO last week to declare its decision to rejoin the international agency, US media outlets reported Sunday citing a State Department spokesperson, pointing out that the move is intended to counter China's climbing influence in the organization.

According to the reports, US Under Secretary of State for Management John Bass had stated earlier this year that the Biden administration believed that rejoining UNESCO would help Washington's global rivalry with China, which has invested large sums of efforts into the UN organization to advance “innovative development” using digital technologies as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.

The move will “help us address a key opportunity cost that our absence is creating in our global competition with China,” Bass reportedly added. “If we’re really serious about the digital-age competition with China, from my perspective, in a clear-eyed set of interests, we can’t afford to be absent any longer from one of the key fora in which standards around education for science and technology are set.”

“And there are a number of other examples in that space of UNESCO’s mission where our absence is noticed and where it undercuts our ability to be as effective in promoting our vision of a free world,” he further claimed.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also expressed concerns last April that the United States has been harmed by its absence at UNESCO, pointing to its role in "education" and the emerging field of artificial intelligence.

“When we’re not at the table shaping that conversation and so actually helping to shape those norms and standards, well, someone else is, and that someone else is probably China,” Blinken noted.

Washington owes UNESCO a hefty amount of money in back dues and is expected to pay hundreds of millions of dollars if it wants to run for a seat on the organization’s executive board in next November's vote, as it seeks to counter China’s influence.