The New Edition of the New Silk Road – the South Caucasus Case

The South Caucasus consists of three states – Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The region is a natural corridor from the East to the West, from Asia to Europe, and from the North to the South, from Russia to the Middle East. This location is the main potential of the region, which lies in the possibility to create routes for the transmission of products, and the most important – energy resources. The aim of the article is to analyze China’s strategy towards the South Caucasus, including the New Silk Road project. Because of the location of the region, the South Caucasus has been the subject of competition, but also of cooperation of many geopolitical ‘players’ – such as the United States, Russia, the European Union, and also China. The main tool of Chinese foreign policy towards not only the South Caucasus, but also in global dimension, has become the New Silk Road. This concept established towards the South Caucasus states, uses the ‘cluster approach’, which means that China seeks to develop relations with all the countries in the region in a parallel way, not to establish any different ways of cooperation with each of the South Caucasus state, like other global powers do.