Congressman Wilson Says Georgia’s Infrastructure Has Been Handed to China, Warns of Strategic Risks

US Representative Joe Wilson, co-chair of the US Helsinki Commission, told lawmakers that the ruling Georgian Dream party has effectively handed over Georgia’s infrastructure to the Chinese Communist Party, a move he said threatens Western access to a key East-West trade route.

Wilson made the remarks on March 5, during a Helsinki Commission hearing on “Responding to Chinese Infiltration and Coercion in Europe.” He said that Georgian Dream has essentially sold Georgia’s infrastructure to the Chinese Communist Party and sold the country into debt slavery. “America’s access to the Middle Corridor is essentially controlled by the Chinese Communist Party,” he added.

At the hearing, Wilson described what he called the increasingly similar and sophisticated tactics used by authoritarian governments, which he said are alarmingly facilitated by technology and innovation. He alleged that the government of Bidzina Ivanishvili and its Georgian Dream party had imprisoned opposition leaders, ignored the wishes of the Georgian people for freedom and prosperity, rejected alternatives to what he described as China’s “debt trap diplomacy,” and accepted Chinese support for surveillance technology and propaganda to suppress pro-Western sentiment. He also suggested that Russia, particularly through Ivanishvili’s former business base, has compounded geopolitical concerns.