Summary:
At the core of the project is the struggle for spheres of influence on the Eurasian continent, which has been going on between Russia, China and the EU for around a decade. Among other things, the project aims to identify Russian, Chinese and EU economic activities in these two broad regions, expose their consequences and downsides and inform the general public about its findings.
Political, economic and cultural ties with Russia, “inherited” from the Cold War, are still operative to varying degrees in these countries. However, the binding and integrating power of an economically weak, revisionist Russia, which relies above all on military strength, is clearly declining – or even driving away some former partners (Georgia).
The EU is meanwhile struggling to maintain its attractiveness because the demands that Brussels places on recipients of its financial support are high, and often involve lengthy reform and adjustment processes that often cause frustration and disappointment among partners (Western Balkans, Georgia).
China is the main beneficiary of this frustration. By offering to finance large investments in long-awaited infrastructure projects quickly and easily, it has found a willing audience in all the project countries. Although capital from China entails considerable risks and disadvantages for the recipient countries, the potential ecological, social and political consequences of cooperation with China in the recipient countries is barely publicly discussed.
Donor:
German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
Main objectives:
Objective 1: Strengthen the capacities of independent and public media in project countries, as they are the main pillars of a critical public discourse on the effects of economic cooperation with China, Russia and the EU.
Objective 2: Increase skills and strengthen the capacities of independent and public media in project countries to continuously inform a broad public with high-quality reporting about the background and consequences of international economic cooperation.
Objective 3: Increase the capacities of the participating journalists to join cross-border projects and engage in data journalism.
Objective 4: Advance the reporting and publication of complex and data-heavy stories achieved through interesting and understandable preparation and strategic public relations campaigns with a wide audience.
Objective 5: Increase the capacities of participating journalists to become parts of international networks whose members support each other in researching and analysing global economic relationships.
Main Activities:
- Several offline meetings and trainings throughout the project’s duration (in Tbilisi, Belgrade, Tashkent, Podgorica, Sarajevo).
- Capacity-building measures/workshops online.
- Work on the database and an interactive map to present the spread of FDIs in the project countries.
- Production of country-based and cross-border long reads and investigative reports.
- Development of curricula for self-study.
Target Groups:
- The direct target group includes 25 journalists from the seven project countries who deal with questions of international economic cooperation either as freelancers or as permanent employees.
- The indirect target group consists of two subgroups:
- group of experts and multipliers from NGOs and science(around 150 people involved in the project through further training measures, research and publications)
- general audience in the participating countries.
Main implementer:
n-ost
Partners:
BIRN Hub
Anhor.uz, Uzbekistan
JAM News, Georgia