Global China In Urban Europe

CHINA.EU is a European Research Council Starting Grant–funded project that examines how Chinese capital is shaping contemporary urban development in Europe, with a particular focus on the cultural industries and social media. The project investigates Chinese investment at the intersection of cultural production, digital media, and urban space. It asks whether, and how, Chinese capital influences European urban environments through the cultural industries; how these industries themselves are transformed by such investment; and what role Chinese social media platforms and technologies play in mediating these relationships.

To explore these dynamics, CHINA.EU combines interviews, visual analysis, digital fieldwork across Chinese and European social media services, and in-person fieldwork in Düsseldorf (Germany), Paris (France), and Athens (Greece). Empirically, the project focuses on the fashion, food and beverage, tourism, and residence-through-investment sectors, as well as Chinese digital platforms such as Xiaohongshu. While recognising that Chinese capital is active across many other fields, including from logistics ports to global technology firms, the project addresses these wider dimensions of global China indirectly, as part of the broader landscape in which urban change unfolds.

A core interest of the project is how contemporary experiences of urbanism in China are being reproduced, adapted, or re-imagined in European contexts. For example: How do Chinese urban trends, including wanghong (网红, internet-famous) phenomenon, shape patterns of investment in European cities? Are planning, aesthetic, or commercial logics from Chinese urbanism being transplanted abroad? And how do digital platforms and transnational consumer cultures help circulate these ideas?

Through this enquiry, CHINA.EU seeks to understand how urban development in Europe may be evolving, what visions of the city new investors and consumers bring with them, and how digital technologies shape emerging forms of urban life.

Image Credit: Carwyn Morris

The exterior of Zhang Liang malatang restaurant in Düsseldorf, Germany. One of the many Chinese restaurants that have opened up in and around the Immermannstraße and Little Tokyo neighbourhood