Китай - Южный Кавказ: Сотрудничество в транспортно-логистических узлах «Пояса и пути»

In order to deepen cooperation within the framework of BRI, various events dedicated to the initiative are being organized in the countries of the SC. The first international forum on BRI was held in Tbilisi in October 15-16, 2015. The event highlighted Georgia’s willingness to be at the forefront of China’s outward-facing foreign policy push, and to help shape Eurasian engagement with the BRI [Pantucci, Lainp 2016, P. 1].4 In February 2018, a conference was held in Beijing on the topic "The Role of the Trade and Transport Trans-Caspian International Route ‘East-West’ in the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative", organized jointly by the embassies of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkey and with the support of the Ministry of Commerce of the PRC [Тасиц 2019, C. 82].

It is worth noting that BRI is credited with ambitions to “reorganize Eurasia under its umbrella to counter American influence”. According to some views Beijing's interests also collide with Moscow, which considers the post-Soviet territories its sphere of influence and whose EEU and Greater Eurasian Partnership strategy compete with the BRI [Роллан 2018, P. 24]. From here it was assumed that a clash between the EEU and the B&R is inevitable [Kaczmarski 2015].

In order to "prevent the such conflict of interests", the two countries decided to "harmonize relations" through the convergence of the EBSR and EEU [Nursha 2015]. At the Moscow summit in May 2015, the leaders of Russia and China, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, signed a Joint declaration on cooperation in coordinating development of EEU and EBSR - reaching a new level of partnership and actually implies creation of a common economic space in Eurasia [Harutyunyan 2017, P. 20]. The undeclared division of spheres of influence between the parties was also expressed in the geopolitical calculations of the two countries, according to which China willingly cedes defense and security spheres to Russia in return for freedom of action as well in SC financial and economic spheres that do not interfere with Moscow's interests [Роллан 2018, C. 24].

On June 20-21, 2022, the participants of the session of the Intergovernmental Council of the EEU in Minsk agreed to develop a Eurasian transport corridor from Europe to China to connect with the BRI. Due to the disruption of logistics and trade chains around the world, the parties considered the development of infrastructure in the territories of the EEU member states in the East-West and North-South directions to be an urgent `issue` [Жэньминь Жибао, 2022].