Civic IDEA’s work has been featured in the 2021 publication of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “China’s Influence in Southeastern, Central, and Eastern Europe Vulnerabilities and Resilience in Four Countries”. Part of the research concerns the Chinese influence and the activities of the notorious Chinese companies in Georgia, as well as, the PRC academic initiatives and its Covid-19 diplomacy in the country. Civic IDEA’s research is attributed to well-demonstrated uncertainties associated with the Georgia-China economic cooperation.
Below we provide an extract from the Carnegie research mentioning Civic IDEA:
“Georgian civil society organizations and experts—such as former defense minister Tinatin Khidasheli, now of Civic IDEA and Transparency International Georgia—enumerate multiple concerns about Sinohydro’s reputation, lack of transparency, and close relations with some government officials. The company has been blacklisted by the African Development Bank. The Georgian government’s transparency portal offered no record of how Sinohydro’s qualifications were assessed.
The China Railway 23rd Bureau Group is also controversial. The company has powerful backers in China. Initially the railway troops of the PLA, it became part of China’s Ministry of Railways. In 1989, the China Railway Construction Corporation was established as a stateowned enterprise. In June 2019, the World Bank announced “the nine-month debarment of China Railway Construction Corporation Ltd. (CRCC), a Chinese, state-owned construction and engineering company, and its wholly-owned subsidiaries, China Railway 23rd Bureau Group Co., Ltd. (CR23) and China Railway Construction Corporation (International) Limited (CRCC International), in connection with misconduct under the East-West Highway Corridor Improvement Project in Georgia.”This did not prevent the company from winning the contract for the new north-south bypass road shortly afterward.”
Check the full report below ?
