Hualing’s Tbilisi — More Stories from the Belt-Road
*Caroline Knowles
Asked what Georgians think about the Chinese, the perfectly dishevelled rockstar man in his thirties says: ‘We don’t think about them. They are not here. They are far away’. On this rain-washed Sunday evening I am exploring the Tbilisi neighbourhood of Vera. Tbilisi — one of my favourite cities — sits in a green mountain bowl and Vera occupies a layer of streets just up the mountain from Sololaki. And Sololaki, its streets lined with crumbling, beautifully decorated Art Nouveau and Baroque mansions where Armenian and Georgian merchants once lived, is the next layer up from the old city. In contrast to this fading grandeur, Vera is younger and funkier, clad in modest nineteenth century buildings with wrought iron balconies, it’s narrow pavements lifted by the roots of old trees. I walk past bars, cafes and bakeries; past off-street places where young people like rockstar man meet friends for beer and coffee; and past casual restaurants in tranquil gardens. Further along the mountain, the Vera gradually changes; its bohemian chic replaced by smart restaurants, art galleries and boutiques.
These streets wear sinister messages on their surface too. Graffiti accuses Russia of ‘fascism’ and ‘warmongering’. It reminds Russians that they are unwelcome — ‘go home!’ 30,000, a third of its Russian war migrants left Georgia in 2023 alone according to government statistics. Of course, Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, and many Georgians believe that their tiny country is next on Putin’s landgrab list after Ukraine. In this febrile political atmosphere China slips under the radar: and yet it shapes Georgia’s landscape in profound ways. The closest Chinese project to Tbilisi is Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City, just nine kilometres northeast of the city: created by a private Chinese conglomerate based in the controversial province of Xinjiang.
Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City — which is nowhere near the sea — sits on a windy plain in three sections. The first is a large area of multiple gated apartment blocks, looking dilapidated although they are less than a decade old. Georgians who rent or buy them say their main advantage is that they are cheap compared to housing closer to the city. Around the apartments are a couple of glitzy but largely empty hotels. Xanadu Casino which is locked looks as if it never actually managed to open. From the outside it looks complete, but the lobby tells a different story. A man and a woman in a white van are having a loud and violent argument in the car park outside the Casino so I skirt round them.
The second part of the Sea New City is a vast Chinese hole in the landscape so that the apartments are disconnected from the enormous mall that forms the third part. It took me 15 minutes to walk the hole along a busy road passing several live and dead dogs on the way. The whole development is unappealing and hard to navigate without private transport. Inside, parts of the mall are still in construction. I walk its acres of white-tiled dazzling light-reflecting floors which make it feel as surreal as it surely is. I hike through the homeware chain Mihome — think Ikea plus B&Q multiplied by ten — and the Carrefour Supermarket, a French chain that is popular in big Chinese cities. Both retailers have taken large concessions which fill-out the mall, encouraged by tax breaks and incentives that bring few benefits for local people. There are hardly shoppers and lots of empty units to let. Another gleaming zombie and shop front for Chinese factories.
Despite Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City’s only partially realised ambition, its official announcements insist that it will become a free trade zone and slip a logistics centre out the back. These moves are by now the familiar building blocks of Chinese urbanism centred on connection for commerce if not for living. Although there are some Soviet style housing blocks near the mall end, the entire development is disconnected from surrounding neighbourhoods and from the city itself. Of course, Hualing and other Chinese firms can only operate with the permission of the Georgian Government. To a cash-starved former Soviet Republic, Chinese capital for city-making must look like a good deal. And Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City is what they got!
*Caroline Knowles is an urban sociologist and the author of Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London, published by Penguin (2022) https://seriousmoneybook.com and a Global Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London.
