China In Eurasia

Against the backdrop of the intensifying war in Ukraine, Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu wrapped up a symbolic trip to Russia and Belarus by bolstering military ties and promoting a Chinese initiative meant to rival Western frameworks and put Beijing at the center of international security issues.

Li landed in Moscow on August 14 to kick off the military-diplomacy tour by holding talks with top officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Beijing and Moscow pledged to strengthen military cooperation despite the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has triggered an ongoing humanitarian disaster and rattled the global security structure.

Li held discussions with senior Belarusian officials in Minsk on August 17 -- including leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka -- on how to deepen collaboration in areas from defense to economic cooperation, with the sides agreeing to hold joint military drills next year.

But central to Li's trip was pushing China’s new Global Security Initiative (GSI), the brainchild of Chinese leader Xi Jinping that has become Beijing’s sweeping blueprint aimed at presenting foreign-policy alternatives to those offered by the West.

The Chinese policy -- which was fully unveiled in February -- calls for an enhanced focus on diplomacy and defense that China says can make the world safer through improved cooperation and dialogue on issues ranging from counterterrorism to increased military exercises and more comprehensive intelligence sharing.

“Whether it is on Afghanistan, Syria, the Korean Peninsula, Ukraine, or the Iranian nuclear issue, China will promote peace talks and help reach an international consensus,” Li said at the Moscow Conference on International Security on August 15. He cited the deal brokered by Beijing to normalize ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March as an example of this approach.

Chinese officials have positioned the GSI in strict opposition to initiatives and policies pushed by the West in recent years, in particular the United States’ use of economic sanctions and Washington’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

While speaking at the conference in Moscow, Li took not-so-veiled shots at U.S. foreign policy.

“The international community is resisting and strongly opposed to the hegemonic approach of imposing one’s will on others and interfering in the internal affairs of other countries,” he claimed. “These erroneous actions deprive other countries of their right to development and autonomy, and are the source of chaos and disaster in the world.”

A Receptive Audience

The Moscow security conference provided fertile ground for Beijing’s efforts to frame itself as an alternative to the United States as a security partner.

The event featured a prerecorded message from Putin in which he accused the United States of adding “fuel to the fire” of global conflicts, with the Russian president focusing on Washington’s military support and delivery of weapons to Ukraine.

The Kremlin invited 92 countries -- including Belarus, Saudi Arabia, India, and Vietnam -- to attend the conference, but Russian media reported that no representative from a Western country was in attendance.

While there, Li said that China was willing to hold more military exercises with other countries and would expand the scope of the drills. On the sidelines of the event, Li -- who was sanctioned by the United States in 2018 for helping China buy fighter jets and equipment from a Russian arms exporter -- also met with defense officials from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Kazakhstan, and Vietnam.

“The whole point of GSI is trying to put a positive spin on China’s security approach,” Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told RFE/RL. “The Chinese like to have these big, central ideas to organize their views of the world that they can then pitch and sell to other countries.”

Global Problems, Chinese Solutions

China unveiled its “global security initiative” in February following a proposal by Xi in April 2022.

In that speech, Xi suggested countries should resolve their disputes through dialogue, respecting one another’s differences in order to achieve “security for all.”

“We need to work together to maintain peace and stability in the world,” Xi said. “Countries around the world are like passengers aboard the same ship who share the same destiny.”

But analysts caution that behind the rosy rhetoric, many of the practices advocated through the GSI are designed to create a global system that is friendlier to autocratic regimes and erodes the current Western-led, multinational process.

“The GSI is the latest and possibly most troubling evidence that the confrontation between the U.S. and China is escalating into a full-fledged contest for global primacy,” Michael Shulman, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, wrote in The Atlantic last year.

It is unknown how Li and other senior Chinese officials will look to further the GSI in the future.

“Countries are willing to sign on to initiatives and narratives like those in the GSI because they want engagement with China,” Pantucci said. “It’s not necessarily that they believe the statements or the details within it, but they want a relationship with Beijing so they are willing to accept it.”

Beyond the statements in Moscow about increased cooperation, Beijing has also included its 12-point proposal for how to end the war in Ukraine as within the broader framework of the GSI. The document has faced criticism from Western leaders who questioned China’s ability to broker a truce given its growing ties with Russia.

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The proposal has still received some endorsements from the Global South and helped set off a string of diplomatic forays over the war in Ukraine from leaders in Africa and Latin America.

Li also used the GSI and his tour to Russia and Belarus to push for other Chinese aims. At the conference, he said that attempts to “use Taiwan to contain China” would “surely end in failure,” according to the state-run agency Xinhua.

Tensions remain high over Taiwan, with Beijing viewing the island as a rogue province that it seeks to claim -- by force, if necessary.

Experts note that many of the principles advocated through GSI such as noninterference and regional stability are references to China’s own concerns and desires over a potential conflict involving Taiwan. Beijing has repeatedly castigated American interactions with the island -- which Washington does not have official diplomatic ties with -- especially over U.S. arms sales to Taipei.

ANAKLIA, Georgia -- In the 20 years that Data Gabelia has worked at the Hotel Anaklia, he's seen the fortunes of the Black Sea resort town of 1,500 people rise and fall.

In the 2000s, he saw money pour into Anaklia as then-President Mikheil Saakashvili sought to turn it into a top vacation destination as part of a development push.

After Saakashvili lost power in 2012, the new government abandoned the bold plans for Anaklia, leaving behind a string of half-built structures and abandoned beachside hotels and restaurants.

Since then, the town has toyed with transforming itself into a site for Black Sea partygoers by hosting music festivals and summer raves. But they have all since relocated -- leaving the western Georgian town behind.

“In the time that I’ve been here, the trend is that things seem to be moving backwards, not forwards,” Gabelia told RFE/RL.

But now Anaklia may be donning a new identity, this time as an unlikely site for geopolitical intrigue that could place Georgia at the epicenter of a global competition for trade routes and infrastructure.

This is because the government has revived an ambitious and controversial plan to build a deep-sea port at Anaklia amid amplified interest in international trade following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, where Western sanctions on Russia -- the pathway for the majority of transcontinental trade -- have left freight companies and governments eyeing new routes.

If successful, it could revolutionize Georgia’s role as a key transit point between Europe and Asia and loosen the country’s status as a bottleneck for global trade.

The megaproject’s future is also caught up in political controversy at home and geopolitical jostling abroad over who will build it. This could have far-reaching fallout for Tbilisi as it seeks candidate status with the European Union and has been worrying Brussels by building closer ties with Russia in recent years while also increasingly turning to Chinese companies to build its large-scale infrastructure.

With the bidding process opened, Anaklia could become an important bellwether to determine if Georgia continues down a path of further integration with the European Union and the West or pivots toward closer ties with Russia and China.

“We are in an abnormal moment of geopolitical risk around the Black Sea [because of] Russia’s invasion,” Romana Vlahutin, a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund and former EU special envoy for connectivity, told RFE/RL. “It’s hard to plan for something when things are this volatile, but we know that what we don’t do, others will.”

The leading alternative to avoid transit through Russia is through the so-called Middle Corridor, which connects China and the countries of Central Asia to Europe through Georgia and Azerbaijan.

The route has also received enhanced interest from Brussels, which is looking to fund strategic infrastructure that cuts Russia out of its trade networks and would compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the global development project worth hundreds of billions of dollars that Beijing has used to build infrastructure and grow its influence.

“If [Brussels] is serious about making the Middle Corridor happen, then you can’t really do it without Anaklia,” Vlahutin told RFE/RL.

Scandal And Struggle Over Anaklia

Georgia’s strategic location on the eastern edge of the Black Sea has made it particularly crucial for the Middle Corridor to take off and has pushed connectivity to the top of the country’s foreign policy agenda.

But the country has a dearth of high-quality infrastructure that has so far held back its transit potential, with long lines of trucks at its borders and ports at Batumi and Poti operating near capacity as trade along the route has steadily increased since 2022.

This has led to organizations like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank warning that without a deep-sea port in Georgia -- which would allow larger ships to transport increased volumes at a more efficient rate -- neither the country nor the Middle Corridor will be competitive as a global trade route.

Against this backdrop, the Georgian government began talking about reviving the project in 2022. Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, who returned to office in 2021 for his second stint as head of government, said that building the port in Anaklia is his government’s “main and ambitious priority” and opened a call for bidders on a new iteration of the project earlier this year, saying the government would retain a 51 percent stake.

The move caught some observers by surprise given that a previous attempt by a consortium between Georgia’s TBC Bank and U.S.-based Conti International to build a deep-sea port in Anaklia was canceled by the government in 2020 after being mired in controversy for years.

The consortium was founded in 2017 by a banker-turned-opposition politician Mamuka Khazaradze, who set up the Lelo for Georgia in 2019. Shortly after that, money laundering charges were brought against him and his partner, Badri Japaridze, who co-founded TBC -- Georgia's biggest bank -- with Khazaradze.

Following the charges, the American investor pulled out and the project ground to a halt until the government canceled the $2.5 billion port contract. In 2022, a court found Khazaradze and Japaridze guilty of fraud, but they were both released without prison time.

Khazaradze has claimed the authorities were trying to sabotage the project and that the real issue behind the dispute is his personal conflict with Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire former prime minister who leads the Georgian Dream party that has been in power since 2012.

Speculation also spread in Georgian media that Russia had pressured Tbilisi to end the venture as Moscow would not welcome a port backed by a U.S. company on the Black Sea or one that would compete with its own port further north in Novorossiisk.

Khazaradze declined RFE/RL’s interview request but is currently taking the government to an arbitration court in London over what he maintains were politically motivated charges to derail the port. He’s been an outspoken critic of the project’s revival and believes it is unlikely to attract sufficient investment given the legal roadblocks his case could bring against it and the government’s desire to hold a 51 percent stake in the port.

Who Will Build Anaklia’s Port?

Despite this unfolding controversy, the bidding process for the Anaklia project is under way.

The deadline for proposals passed in June and they are currently being reviewed, David Javakhadze, the director of the LEPL Anaklia Deep Sea Port Development Agency within Georgia’s Economy and Sustainable Development Ministry, told RFE/RL.

“Several international companies have expressed their interest toward the project, including a consortium consisting of several companies,” Javakhadze said in e-mailed comments that did not say which companies submitted bids.

Once selected, the deep-sea port would take years to be completed and likely cost billions of dollars. In the meantime, attention is focused on which companies -- and their country of origin -- will be selected.

Chinese firms are particularly emerging as potential bidders. Chinese companies had previously approached Khazaradze’s consortium about building the port and interest in Georgia has only grown since the disruption to reliable trade routes due to the war in Ukraine. During an interview in late 2022, Zhou Qian, China’s ambassador to Tbilisi, said Anaklia was important for the success of the Middle Corridor and that the embassy would encourage Chinese firms to place bids.

Tbilisi’s interest in China appears to be growing, too, with Garibashvili upgrading Georgia’s ties with Beijing to a strategic partnership during a July trip to Chengdu -- a development that has only added to speculation that a Chinese-led bid could be chosen to build the port.

Doing so could come with fallout for Tbilisi’s relations with Brussels, especially as it awaits the EU’s decision in December on its bid for membership-candidate status.

Tbilisi’s relationship with Brussels and Washington has become strained in recent years amid increased anti-Western rhetoric, concerns over the rule of law, the government’s neutral stance toward the Ukraine war, deepening relations with Russia, and democratic backsliding by the ruling Georgian Dream party.

In February, the government tried to pass a controversial “foreign agents” bill that copied a similar law infamously introduced in Russia in 2012 that branded media, NGOs, individuals, and other civil society organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from foreign sources as “agents of foreign influence.” The government backed down and withdrew the bill in March following sustained street protests and international condemnation, with Brussels saying that it was incompatible with EU values.

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Why The Georgian Government Climbed Down On The 'Foreign Agents' Law

Similar concerns were raised in May about warming ties with Moscow when the Kremlin unexpectedly abolished visas for Georgian nationals and lifted a flight ban unilaterally imposed in 2019 after a wave of anti-Kremlin protests in Georgia.

In response, the government resumed direct flights with Russia despite relations being rocky since Moscow invaded Georgia in 2008, with Tbilisi losing control of two Russian-backed separatist regions. EU spokesman Peter Stano told reporters following the move that it raised “concerns about Georgia’s EU path.”

Asuncion Sanchez Ruiz, deputy head of mission of the EU delegation to Georgia, says a similar litmus test will come in choosing the winning bid for the Anaklia deep-sea port. The project has been selected within Global Gateway, Brussel’s infrastructure financing answer to China’s BRI, and she says that the EU has a strong preference to see European firms involved in the port.

“Georgia has applied to the EU and whoever the final investor is, we need to make sure that it’s in line with the [EU-Georgia] Association Agreement,” Sanchez Ruiz told RFE/RL during an interview in Tbilisi, referring to the 2016 deal that grants Georgia access to some sectors of the European Single Market as well as visa-free travel to the bloc.

“If what is chosen is not in-line with the EU -- a club that Georgia wants to join -- then that should help tell us about the direction this government is heading towards,” she said.

Big Hopes And Shattered Dreams

Amid the palm trees that dot Anaklia and the boardwalk that was meant to showcase it as a seaside destination, the marks of the aborted attempt to build Georgia’s first deep-sea port can still be seen in the town.

Maya Svanidze, a 60-year-old resident of Anaklia who operates a guest house for summer tourists, remembers the optimism that took the town as promises of new jobs and development were attached to the ambitious project.

Like many residents on Anaklia’s southwestern edge, she was offered a government payout to sell her home to make room for the operational grounds of the port. Svanidze accepted the money, which she said was enough to relocate and buy a new house just a few minutes away. She moved there with her family in 2018.

As ground was broken, mountains of earth and sand were moved and piled up within the new sprawling, fenced-off construction site. Then it all stopped -- but the sand stayed.

The sand has since become a major nuisance for locals, with regular gusts of wind from the sea spreading it into houses, drains, and cars for those who live nearby. Svanidze and others have raised the issue with officials, but the piles of sand have remained.

“I would be happy to see this port get built and this sand and dust finally be gone,” Svanidze told RFE/RL. “But things have been promised before and they don’t always come about. So, I’ll believe it when I see it.”

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Meanwhile, the Anaklia project is also facing competition from Poti, the country’s largest port that currently serves as the main hub for Georgia’s international trade.

APM Terminals, the Netherlands-based operator of the port in Poti, announced plans to double its capacity and allow for bigger ships to enter.

It is currently in the final stages of talks with the government on the expansion, which could upgrade Poti’s capacity and help unclog the current shipping bottleneck, though its narrow entrance could still limit the amount of ships compared to the plans for Anaklia.

APM Terminals did not respond to RFE/RL’s request for comment.

Roman Gotsiridze, an opposition lawmaker with the United National Movement, says it's unclear if Georgia would need both projects, even with the uptick in trade across the Middle Corridor.

That’s why, he says, his focus of the last several months has been in trying to get answers from the government over the Anaklia project and to push for a formal investigation for more details on the plans to be revealed.

But those efforts have not yielded much. He says the government has been reluctant to answer the opposition’s questions about the port and in some cases has turned to loopholes to avoid appearing in parliament or simply not turned up for the constitutionally mandated question period.

In the meantime, he says he will be watching the tender process closely to see what kind of bids get put forward.

“My concern is that a bid from a Western country won’t be chosen and instead it will be from a country that can reach some sort of agreement with Russia,” Gotsiridze told RFE/RL.

“China, a [Persian] Gulf country, or a combination of them together are all possibilities.”

Written and reported by Reid Standish. Photos and reporting by Tamuna Chkareuli