Plans for a Chinese Port Roil the Politics of a Former Soviet Nation

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.

In central Georgia, workers from China are erecting soaring viaducts and cutting dozens of tunnels through hard rock to build the first modern highway to link the east and west of the country. In the north, a 5.5-mile tunnel is being bored through the mountains by China Railway Tunnel Group to expand an existing highway to Russia.

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.