CHINA’S POLICY IN THE SOUTH CAUCASUS: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Abstract

The paper examines the policy of the People's Republic of China in the South Caucasus. The main task of the research is to highlight the political, economic and cultural factors that strongly affect the formation of China’s foreign policy in the region. China’s policy in the South Caucasus has become more active in the last decade, which is primarily due to the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative and China's growing interests in the region.

The study of the South Caucasian vector of China's foreign policy is quite actual among the researchers of both Armenia and other countries of the region. However, we consider it necessary to explore official Beijing's regional policies in the context of a comparative analysis. The need to explore the issue has especially heightened after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, as it transformed Beijing's political interests and changed its behavior in the region. Though China's interests in the South Caucasus are primarily measured in the context of the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, in fact, it can be the most important, but only one aspect of China’s growing interests in the region. In the conditions of the Russian-Ukrainian military action, which started in 2022, the given topic becomes even more relevant.

In the paper we have tried to observe the development process of China's South Caucasian policy in dynamics, as well as to highlight the factors that influence the formation of Beijing’s policy behavior. On the other hand, we have set a task to consider the possible scenarios of the development of relations between China and the countries of the  the South Caucasus region as well as the possible scenarios for the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative in the South Caucasus.