Macroscope | What differentiates the US-driven Blue Dot Network from China’s Belt and Road Initiative? Money

The revived Blue Dot Network is the latest in a series of attempts by the US, Japan and Australia to counter China’s transnational infrastructure-focused scheme

However, it lacks the funding needed to back projects in the way China has been able to, using its foreign exchange reserves and financing from state banks

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Engineers from Tanzania and China chat at the construction site of the project to upgrade Dar es Salaam Port in Tanzania, on July 8, 2020. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 3:30am, 14 Jun 2021Updated: 3:30am, 14 Jun 2021

Imitation, it is said, is a “form of flattery” and if that is true then China should be feeling extremely flattered by the lengths to which other powers (notably the US, Japan and Australia) are prepared to go to emulate its remarkable infrastructure initiatives, domestically and overseas.

The latest manifestation of this “copy and catch-up” obsession on the part of the three powers (or partners of convenience) is their launching of consultations on something called the Blue Dot Network which, broadly speaking, represents their response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The move should perhaps come as little surprise at a time when the US is bent on forming China-countering alliances with other key nations, but what is notable is the fact that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is providing technical support to the initiative at the request of the US, Australia and Japan.

The move comes as the Paris-based OECD has just come under new leadership, with former Australian politician and finance minister Mathias Cormann taking over from Angel Gurria as secretary general and when the OECD has added a desire to “preserve individual liberty” to its mission statement.

Preserving individual liberty – as distinct from broader socio-economic aims – is not the kind of activity that a politically neutral body like the OECD would normally be expected to engage in, and it is not stretching a point to see this as part of a wider China-criticising trend.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga walks with US President Joe Biden towards the White House Rose Garden, in Washington on April 16. Photo: AP

The context in which the Blue Dot Network has come into being is certainly political (though it might not sound so from its nondescript title). Its genesis has to be seen against the background of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.

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