Global China in Urban Europe: Understanding the role of Chinese actors, media, cultures, and capital in European urban development

The concept of global China understands China’s influence as manifested in outward flows of capital, infrastructure, migrants, media, cultural programmes and international and civil society engagement, yet for an area of study that purports to be ‘global’ scholarship in the field of global China has focused almost exclusively on the role of Chinese citizens, Chinese institutions, and carriers of Chinese capital (hereafter, Chinese actors) and Chinese capital in developing countries and the Global South. To combat this narrow view of global China, China.EU takes an innovative approach to the study of global China that pivots scholarship on global China to the Global North. The project moves beyond a methodologically nationalist and state-led understanding of global China, to instead focus on how global China, as understood through Chinese actors and capital, is (i) urban, (ii) cultural, and (iii) digital – often simultaneously all three. In doing this, the project will answer four research questions: (1) What concepts are used to understand urbanism and urban development in China? (2) How do Chinese actors see and understand European urban space? What notions do they carry with them from China? (3) How are Chinese actors as (un)willing representatives of global China influencing urban development in Europe? (4) What insights about global China emerge when we analyse global urban China and the role of Chinese actors in European urban spaces?To answer these questions, Europe.CN uses innovative hybrid fieldwork methods to analyse the heterogenous role of Chinese actors and capital in three European contexts: Dusseldorf & the Ruhr Area, Paris, and Athens. Furthermore, the project hypothesizes that Chinese actors in urban Europe will see, understand, imagine, and conceptualize European urban space through Chinese concepts and the recent history of rapid urban development in China. To understand this, the team will produce a handbook of ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ ur