China’s Digital Silk Road Geostrategy and Eurasian Economic Union: Challenges and Opportunities

The Department of Geography of the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies (LEWI) is organizing a public seminar on 11 April 2024.

• Speaker: Dr. Mher Sahakyan, Director of the China-Eurasia Council for Political and Strategic Research, Armenia
• Date: 11 April 2024
• Time: 16:30 – 18:00 (HKT)
• Venue: AAB1217, HKBU
• Zoom link: https://hkbu.zoom.us/j/93022636740

Abstract
This study explores the Digital Silk Road's impact on the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), emphasizing China's need for the EAEU market to distribute high-tech products and the member states' reliance on Chinese technologies for digitalization and economic growth. It delves into Sino-Russian and Sino-Belarusian high-tech collaborations, highlighting how Western sanctions drive technological decoupling
between the US and China while fostering ties between China and Russia. The study also examines China's high-tech partnerships with Central Asian EAEU members and discusses the challenges and potential for cooperation with Armenia. It underscores the growing economic and political influence of China through the Digital Silk Road in the EAEU region, presenting opportunities for all member states
to enhance their digital trading capabilities.

Biography
Mher Sahakyan is a 2024 LEWI Visiting Fellow at the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. Mher is the founder and director of the China-Eurasia Council for Political and Strategic Research in Armenia. He is the editor of Routledge Handbook of Chinese and Eurasian International Relations and China and Eurasian Powers in Multipolar World Order: Security, Diplomacy, Economy and Cybersecurity. He also edited China and Eurasia: Rethinking Cooperation and Contradictions in the Era of Changing World Order, published by Routledge in September 2021. He holds a doctorate in international relations from China’s Nanjing University. Mher Sahakyan was an AsiaGlobal Fellow at the Asia Global Institute of the University of Hong Kong from 2020 to 2022. In 2023, the Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia’s Supreme Certifying Committee awarded him an associate professorship in political science. He is an elected advisory board member of the International Institute for Peace, Austria, and the School of Liberal Arts & Humanities, Woxsen University, India. He is the founder of the Eurasian Research on Modern China and Eurasia annual international conference.