Authors

Discussion

This paper explores how the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is being adapted and contextualized to meet the diverse connectivity needs of countries in the South Caucasus. Specifically, the paper analyses the differentiated implementation of BRI projects in three key policy areas that aim to enhance regional connectivity – transportation infrastructure, digital and telecommunication, and people-to-people exchange – in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. In Western scholarship, there are two main views on the implementation of BRI: first, the BRI is a ‘one-fits-all’ strategy, applied in the same way to a wide variety of countries and regions (Pomfret, 2020; Siu, 2019), and second, that the BRI has no overall coherence (Hameiri et al., 2019; Ye, 2019; Summers, 2016). By contrast, this study demonstrates that China’s BRI is beyond the interpretation that this policy has limited flexibility from the local perspective. The paper suggests that the notion that a ‘tailored approach to each country’ rather than a ‘one-fits-all’ can more accurately describe and interpret the projects of BRI-related actors in the South Caucasus.