Not content with building, only three or four months ago, the largest harbor on South America's Pacific coast (in Peru), Ivan Nechepurenko reports that China is engaged in the process of constructing a deep-water port project on the Black Sea (in Georgia), something that one would think should upset Beijing's ally Russia at least as much as, if not more than, Western nations. But apparently not, according to the New York Times.
This, as Xi Jinping rails and sputters about having suffered a loss at the hands of Donald Trump at the Panama Canal, although China did succeed in having its preferred candidate emerge as the head of the OAS. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal's Walter Russell Mead reports that
China strengthens its ties with Russia and Iran while Western alliances are fraying … While Western attention was largely on events in Ukraine and the Middle East, China has been steadily moving toward its long-term goals.
Ivan Nechepurenko in the New York Times:
For more than a year, pro-Western marchers in Georgia, a former Soviet republic that borders Russia, have been accusing their government of allowing Moscow to increasingly reassert its sway over their country.
But driving around this nation of 3.6 million people in the heart of the mountainous Caucasus region, the influence of another ambitious power becomes apparent. China has been stepping up its activities in the region in recent years, building infrastructure and expanding trade routes that it hopes will boost its economy.
… To the west, preparations are underway for another Chinese company, China Communications Construction Company, to develop Georgia’s first deep-sea port on the Black Sea as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure and trade initiative.
The port, as yet unnamed, is now at the center of a debate in Georgia and abroad about China’s growing influence in the region and the Caucasus nation’s pivot away from the West. Inflaming the situation is the fact that the project was stripped from a group of Georgian, European, and U.S. companies — the Anaklia Development Consortium — before eventually being promised to the Chinese company last May.
Salome Zourabichvili, the former Georgian president who emerged last year as a leading voice for the pro-Western opposition, said the move was like “stabbing our relations with our American and European partners.”
In July, a State Department official said that awarding the port project to the Chinese company was “incompatible” with wanting to join “U.S. and E.U.-based international organizations.” In 2019, the United States had billed the port as something that could “prevent Georgia from falling prey to Russian or Chinese economic influence.”
… For Georgia, the port would help develop the country as a regional transport hub.
For China, the port would become a gateway to the Caucasus, linking Asia with Europe across what it calls the “middle corridor.” It would allow Chinese companies to ship their goods from China via railways in Central Asia and across the Caspian to Europe, skirting Russia, which has been the target of Western sanctions because of the war in Ukraine.
… Russia, which is still considered to be Georgia’s main trading partner, could also be a major beneficiary of the project. Novorossiysk, the main Russian port on the Black Sea, has been hobbled by Western sanctions, and with the new Chinese-built routes, goods could flow into and out of Russia unimpeded across the Caucasus.
The port situation highlights how the rivalry between China and the United States is growing in the region, pulling in smaller countries like Georgia.
Related: You Cannot Understand Trump's Greenland-Panama-Canada Declarations Unless You Recognize the Extent of the China Threat
• A national security imperative: By doubling down on partnerships with Ukraine and Greenland, the U.S. aims to break free from Chinese dependency while reinforcing its technological supremacy
• Beijing's Road & Belt: China is not only trying to junk the Monroe Doctrine, it wants to establish itself as the head of the OAS
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