What’s in it for the Belt-and-Road countries? How might the states of Central Asia and the Caucasus benefit from China’s grand new investment initiative?
The scale of the initiative is enormous. So far China is estimated to have underwritten over
$900 bn of loans — some on concessionary terms, many on commercial terms—in 71 countries,ranging from Poland to Pakistan. Many projects are under way. Kazakhstan has opened a massive dry port on its eastern border with China. Its seaports on the Caspian sea are also being expanded, and east-west rail and road connections are being upgraded. On the other side of the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Georgia hope to capture some of the flow of Chinese goods to Europe via the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, which opened last year, and Georgia has secured $50m in Chinese investment in a proposed deep-sea port on the Black Sea.
Other countries are jockeying to attract Chinese attention for BRI projects. Last November the Georgian government held its second biennial Tbilisi Belt and Road Forum, in which delegations from Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia presented historical trade route maps as part of their efforts to earn a place on this 21st-century Silk Road, with all the accompanying Chinese investment.
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