Chinese Conglomerate Builds a New Chinese City in Georgia

Chinese conglomerate Hualing Group has built a modern Chinese city in Georgia, an article published by Forbes said.

The city, which is named Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City, was designed to be an all-inclusive, macro-planned urban center, located north of the Georgia's capital beside the city reservoir.

The city has its own shopping malls, schools, hospital and hotels, with rows of housing and the largest retail and wholesale trading center in the Caucasus. The Hotels and Preference hotel, a huge five-star hotel with 250 rooms and has the largest ballroom in the country, is located at the center of the emerging city.

According to the report, the plan to build the city started after Mi Enhua, the founder and president of Hualing Group, visited Georgia in 2007 and fell in love with the place. He said he will build a city to help rebuild the country which has been recovering from the post-Soviet chaos.

"He just liked Georgia because of its scenery and good political and business environment," Tatia Sioridze, who works for the Chinese company's hotel in the city, said. "So they decided to start developing their business here."

As the single largest investor in Georgia, Hualing has already poured in about half a billion dollars into the country, supporting large-scale projects that include the Kutaisi Free Industrial Zone, several luxury hotels, a growing wine export enterprise, a major wood harvesting operation, a large tea cultivation program, and 90 percent ownership of Basisbank, previously a local bank. In addition to this, the company has built the new city.

But Hualing's operations are not confined to Georgia alone, the report said. The company has heeded China's "Going Out" policy, encouraging Chinese company to invest overseas. Now the company has extended its presence and build its international portfolio with projects in countries in the European Union and the U.S. as well as in Georgia.