Uneasy Streets

Ghost neighbourhoods, trainless railways, empty offices – a bottom-up look at China’s footprint in British cities.

At the high tide of UK-China relations, Chinese investors pumped billions into British property and projects each year, promising urban renewal and economic prosperity. But as political tides turned in both countries, the money dried up. A decade on, we live in the ruins of this ‘golden era’.

Uneasy Streets by Caroline Knowles explores China’s global influence from the bottom up. Focusing on London and Manchester, she contrasts Beijing’s grand claims with the ramshackle physical evidence she finds at street level: a series of half-finished buildings and abandoned holes in the ground. And this isn’t just a British phenomenon. All along the continent-spanning Belt and Road network, Chinese-funded cities are patchworks of incompleteness, the products of relentlessly profit-driven urbanism that puts people last.

China’s soft-power city-making falls far short of the dreams displayed in glossy brochures. Combining urban observation with sharp commentary, interviewing property developers, Chinese migrants and other city-dwellers, Knowles paints an intimate, nuanced portrait. This is the material and human fabric of Chinese Britain.

‘For anyone who wants to get beneath the geopolitical stereotype of Chinese power and influence, this incredibly well-researched book reveals how Chinese money lands on our streets and shapes our cities. A wonderful book, with insights about the nature of global capital which go well beyond China.’ – Anna Minton, author of Big Capital: Who Is London For?

‘In a field often dominated by theoretical discussions about grand geopolitics, this book offers a jolt of reality from ground level. Knowles asks pertinent questions about China, reminding us that even in the transnational age, all politics is local.’ – Martin Thorley, author of All That Glistens: Chinese Party-State Influence in Britain

‘A rich, ground-level account of how global Chinese investment is lived and felt within UK urban neighbourhoods. Through captivating narratives about everyday encounters, partial developments, uneven transformations and unrealised futures, it renders abstract geopolitical processes tangible.’ – Anna Lora-Wainwright, Professor of the Human Geography of China, University of Oxford, and author of China: The Basics

‘A master analyst of city life from the street up, Knowles has done it again, with a surgical probe into the complex and contested footprints of a globalising China along the streets of London and Manchester and much beyond.’ – Xiangming Chen, Raether Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology, Trinity College, Connecticut, and co-editor of Global Cities, Local Streets