SIPRI researchers Jiayi Zhou and Richard Ghiasy presented the SIPRI – Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) report ‘The Silk Road Economic Belt: Security Implications and EU-China Cooperation Prospects’ in Tbilisi, Georgia.
The event focussed on the opportunities and challenges that the Silk Road Economic Belt brings at large, as well as those pertaining specifically to the South Caucasus. It followed recent launches of the report in several cities in Europe and the Caucasus, including Brussels, Stockholm, Tutzing and Yerevan. Watch the livestream from the Stockholm event here.
The report itself fills some of the existing gaps in discourse on the security implications of China’s Silk Road Economic Belt (the 'Belt'). It sheds light on what has motivated China to initiate it, and how it fits into China’s own evolving security concepts and interests. It also examines current and possible future security implications of the Belt in two instrumental regions: Central and South Asia. Will the Belt contribute to stabilizing these regions or contribute to exacerbating drivers of instability? Based on these findings, this report provides policy recommendations to the EU.
The event in Tbilisi on 19 May was attended by regional representatives from the diplomatic, policy, academic, think tank and business communities, and was hosted in cooperation with the South Caucasus office of the FES and the Levan Mikeladze Foundation.