Executive Summary:
- U.S. State Department Official Peter Andreoli visited Georgia and its Anaklia Deep Sea Port on March 27, three days before U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze held their first phone call.
- The consortium led by China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) was chosen as Anaklia’s developer in 2024, but the deal has not been finalized. Georgia also cut the port’s budget by almost two-thirds, leaving it in an ambiguous financial and legal position.
- Concern over the growing influence of the People’s Republic of China in the South Caucasus, particularly in Georgia, has raised questions about whether Georgia will change Anaklia’s trajectory amid cooperation with Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran.
On March 27, Peter Andreoli, a U.S. State Department official, traveled to Georgia and its Black Sea coast to visit Anaklia’s deep-sea port, as well as the nearby port of Poti. Three days later, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held his first phone call with Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, which marked the highest-level bilateral engagement since Washington suspended the U.S.–Georgia strategic partnership in November 2024 as a result of Georgian Dream’s authoritarian, anti-Western turn (U.S. State Department; Civil.ge, March 30; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 11).
In light of recent developments and renewed regional dynamics in the South Caucasus, Anaklia has regained its status and re-emerged as a topic within U.S.–Georgia relations. Its fate is legally and financially unresolved. A Chinese state-owned consortium sanctioned by the U.S. government has been named the developer of this port for the past two years, but the deal has not been finalized yet.
Anaklia deep-sea port was designed to be an exclusively Western-backed infrastructure project. The Anaklia Development Consortium (ADC) won the competition to become a developer in 2016 and established that the port is a central link in the shortest overland route between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the European Union. In 2020, the Georgian authorities canceled the contract with ADC, accusing it of failing to fulfill its obligations, to which ADC responded with an arbitration lawsuit in Washington, D.C., and ultimately lost (OC Media, October 3, 2025).
Tbilisi named a new consortium in May 2024, led by China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) and its subsidiary China Harbor, alongside China Road and Bridge Corporation and Qingdao Port International, as the developer of the port (see EDM, June 6, 2024; see China Brief, June 21, 2024). According to the initial agreement, the Chinese consortium would hold a 49 percent stake, while the Georgian government would hold the remaining 51 percent. Then-Minister of Economy Levan Davitashvili announced that the first phase of investment and subsequent development would amount to $600 million (OC Media, October 3, 2025).
None of these provisions has been formalized. As of May of this year, no binding contract is available. Kobakhidze acknowledged in September 2024 that several issues were unresolved with the CCCC. Georgia’s 2026 state budget, along with many other economic and financial challenges, reflects a similar stagnation dynamic, including the initial port funding being cut by two-thirds, from $56 million to $18 million (DFWatch, December 2, 2025; see EDM, April 28). Dredging operations are being conducted by a Belgian firm, Jan De Nul, rather than CCCC, under a separate contract signed in the summer of 2024, with the concluding breakwater works expected to be finalized by late 2026 or early 2027 (DFWatch, December 2, 2025). Beijing’s unwillingness and disinterest in working on the project are one explanation for the delay in completing a port considered a geopolitical breakthrough in the South Caucasus. The disinterest itself raises the possibility that the PRC has secured a position on paper so favorable that it does not consider any obligation to develop the port.
CCCC is not a random, ordinary company or a contractor from the PRC. The company has been subject to restrictions and sanctions by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) since June 2021 for its close ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. The U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi warned in 2020 that CCCC’s projects abroad and commercial ventures were marked by poor construction, inferior quality, labor abuse, environmental damage, and unsustainable debt traps (U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, September 10, 2020).
The Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia’s Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence (MEGOBARI) Act, introduced by U.S. Congressman Joe Wilson, passed the House of Representatives in May of 2025 (OC Media, May 6, 2025; see EDM, June 2, 2025). The legislation is meant to impose sanctions on officials from Georgia’s ruling party and its government. It explicitly frames Tbilisi’s rapprochement with Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran as a threat to U.S. interests in the region (OC Media, September 2025). A second, more targeted measure was announced in February. Wilson and Congressman Steve Cohen introduced H.R. 7668, the “Countering China’s Control of the Caucasus Act.” This bill would oblige the U.S. secretary of state, the U.S. director of national intelligence, and the U.S. secretary of defense to prepare and submit a classified report on the penetration of Russian and Chinese intelligence and influence operations in Georgia within 180 days of its enactment, as well as a five-year strategy for bilateral relations with Georgia (Congress.gov, February 25; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 20).
Washington’s renewed attention to Georgia and Anaklia is also part of a broader pattern taking place in Eurasia. These regional dynamics and a reconfiguration of Eurasian transit underline the reemergence of the South Caucasus as an important element in this framework. One area of focus is the Middle Corridor, or the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), which extends from the PRC and Central Asia across the Caspian Sea to the South Caucasus through Azerbaijan and Georgia, and ultimately to Europe, while bypassing Russia and Iran.
Georgia’s other ports, such as Batumi and Poti, are not sufficient for such transit and have reached their limits. Anaklia is designed for specific vessels that these ports cannot take, and the World Bank and the European Union’s Trans-European Transport Network have identified it as a priority in this corridor framework (EU Directorate-General for Enlargement and Eastern Neighborhood, February 6). Without a functioning deep-sea water port, Georgia’s role as the gateway of Eurasian connectivity is at risk.
The United States has invested in a different corridor in the South Caucasus. The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a 42-kilometer (26-mile) route through Armenia’s Syunik province linking the Nakhchivan exclave to its mainland in Azerbaijan, grants the United States development rights for 99 years, with construction expected to begin in late 2026 (President of Azerbaijan, August 9; Caspian News, November 14, 2025). As Armenia has been steadfast in its efforts to integrate into the Western connectivity frameworks, and Tbilisi remains isolated from its partners in the United States and the European Union, Azerbaijan and Armenia have effectively replaced Georgia and its corridor architecture, which now shifts around Georgia rather than through it.
The phone call between Rubio and Kobakhidze, as well as Andreoli’s visit, raises the question of whether any opening or genuine compromise exists with the Georgian government. The U.S. press release of the conversation emphasized “security in the Black Sea region and Caucasus,” while Georgia’s spoke of “resetting partnership with the United States” and “connectivity issues”—two distinct framings that also reveal a contrast between Washington’s and Tbilisi’s agendas (U.S. Department of State; Civil.ge, March 30).
There are many obstacles to resetting the U.S.–Georgia relations. Georgia officials are reluctant to make concessions, as it would be perceived as weakness in the eyes of the leadership and political-security elite circles. At the same time, Georgia has deepened ties with the PRC through a free trade agreement, maintained commercial engagement with Russia and helped Moscow evade sanctions, and facilitated Iranian sanctions evasion, with nearly 13,000 Iranian companies operating on Georgian soil, some of which are contractors for government bodies (Civic IDEA, July 2025; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, October 24, 2025).
To save face, Georgian Dream will not present this phone call as pressure to change course. It has every reason to paint Rubio’s engagement as an apparent validation of its foreign policy course, which has been anti-Western and isolationist, especially since the war in Ukraine took place in 2022, and culminated on November 28, 2024, when Kobakhidze declared that Georgia would no longer negotiate on EU accession (see EDM, December 6, 10, 2024). Even though much depends on Georgia’s political will to prevent Anaklia from falling into the hands of Beijing, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank could discourage contracts awarded to specific Chinese firms with records of unsustainable debt and labor abuse (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 20). The renewed attention of Washington in Georgia and a re-engagement have the potential to put pressure on both the Georgian government to change course and ensure that Anaklia does not become a Chinese geopolitical project in the heart of Eurasia.
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