Uneasy Streets: How Chinese Money Is Remaking Urban Britain - Caroline Knowles [Manchester/online]

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This talk explores Chinese investment and its impact on British cities. Hosted by the Manchester China Institute and the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity, this event will be a book launch of Uneasy Streets: How Chinese Money Is Remaking Urban Britain by Caroline Knowles, with remarks by Amy Y. Zhang. The event will be followed by a reception and opportunity to meet the author. 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’. 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. Combining urban observation with sharp commentary, interviewing property developers, Chinese migrants and other city-dwellers, Knowles paints an intimate, nuanced portrait.