{"id":338,"date":"2026-06-22T04:40:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T04:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=338"},"modified":"2026-06-22T04:40:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T04:40:19","slug":"how-china-made-manchesterism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=338","title":{"rendered":"How China made Manchesterism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Walk with me through a fragment of Manchester. Let\u2019s start on Corporation Street, where the 19th-century pomp of Victoria Station abuts an outcrop of high rises. To be fair, I had to use my imagination for some of them. Many are finished, all glass and steel, but others are mere holes in the ground and on the landscape. From the reports and brochures, I\u2019d expected something a bit more, well, built<\/em>. Instead, it all looks rather ragged, unfinished, like it might become something eventually. One of the holes is a rough temporary car park, filled with rubble, dirt, litter, parked cars.<\/p>\n

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Just nearby is the \u201cNew Vic\u201d development, another mass of skyscrapers. Like 40% of Manchester new builds, these apartments are raised to house generation rent. They look finished outside, but are still looking for tenants when I walk past. Slogans in the letting-office windows announce that they are \u201cFor the enlightened\u201d, \u201cFor the adventurous\u201d, \u201cFor the curious\u201d \u2014 for, in other words, the University of Manchester graduates who want a \u201ccurated leisure area\u201d even as they slog all day to pay for it. Despite the obvious fact that the 15,000 new homes announced on the billboard as \u201ccoming soon\u201d are not yet finished, passersby are advised to \u201creserve your home today\u201d.<\/p>\n

A bit further along, I see that much of the Angel Square development is also coming soon. A student accommodation building and an abandoned coroners\u2019 court sit nearby, off the fraying city side streets. The whole area looks crumbling, uninviting, not joined up to anything. I turn onto Dantzic Street, which later becomes Collyhurst Road, passing more building sites, and more lonely holes in the ground, until the city fades into light industry and logistics.<\/p>\n

All this is Manchester. But it is also Chinese Manchester. Take the New Vic. It\u2019s partly funded by Chinese money, though we don\u2019t know how much because the local council keeps it secret. Or else there are the developments at Dantzic Street. Pinnacle, a UK developer, failed to build a pair of tower blocks there and at Angelsgate. Pinnacle went into administration in 2017, leaving off-plan buyers in Hong Kong, who pay deposits to secure apartments in buildings that are not yet built, short some \u00a331 million. Manchester police and the Serious Fraud Squad were brought in to investigate irregularities, but in the end no charges were laid for lack of evidence. A Hong Kong company \u2014 Far Eastern Consortium \u2014 then bought the site and plans to develop it. Construction is delayed, and Manchester\u2019s building-site aesthetic endures.<\/p>\n

This is how Chinese money lands in Manchester, from Far Eastern Consortium, Beijing Construction Engineering Group International (BCEGI), CR Construction and the rest, aided and abetted by the council. Flush from his victory in Makerfield, we shouldn\u2019t forget that Andy Burnham\u2019s \u201cManchesterism\u201d is partly Chinese too, even if this sea of foreign cash churns largely in private. Asia, not China, features in council reports as a major source of capital: for all that real estate is now part of the story Manchester tells itself, locals may not be happy to learn how it\u2019s funded.<\/p>\n

The ragged China on the streets of Manchester is at odds with that other China \u2014 gleaming, self-confident and widely understood as the coming superpower of our century. That country was most obviously on display during the so-called \u201cgolden era\u201d of Anglo-Chinese relations, spanning from 2008 to 2017, when the UK was keen to hitch its sluggish economic wagon to China\u2019s high-speed train, anticipating a fast ride to prosperity.<\/p>\n

Billions in Chinese investment flowed into London, Manchester, Liverpool, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rushed to invest capital it couldn\u2019t absorb at home. The UK, for its part, was equally keen to secure investment for under-capitalized utilities, infrastructure and other city-making projects. All the while, warm words and photo ops celebrated the golden era at the highest levels. \u201cLet\u2019s stick together and create a golden decade for both of our countries,\u201d proclaimed Chancellor George Osborne in 2015, as he, Mayor Boris Johnson and Prime Minister David Cameron all toured Beijing throughout the 2010s. Xi Jinping visited the UK in 2015, describing Chinese investment in Britain as an extension of his country\u2019s much-touted Belt and Road initiative.<\/p>\n

UK-China relations began deteriorating from 2017. The CCP no longer wanted to offshore capital needed for development at home, especially when a property debt bubble threatened to upend China\u2019s economy. Big Chinese developers building in Britain pulled out of projects without finishing them. Political developments hardly helped. The crushing of Hong Kong\u2019s pro-democracy movement; controversies around planning permission for the new Chinese super-embassy in London; the steady drip of spy scandals \u2014 all these brought diplomatic relationships to a new low. By 2020, China was no longer the wealthy and beneficent investor it had been in the golden era, but a ruthless authoritarian state threatening Britain\u2019s national security.<\/p>\n

Since 2017, cities like Manchester have been living in the debris of the golden era. Because the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) never kept track, we still don\u2019t know how much Chinese money washed through their city, or how it landed on the streets. But what\u2019s clear is that by buying so many tickets for the China Express, Manchester and cities like it are now stuck with the consequences: a shattered urban landscape with empty lots and half-finished buildings, as old developers pull out of projects, and their replacements scale back plans to save money.<\/p>\n

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Beyond the city center, Manchester Airport City is a good example of what this means in practice. The project began as a joint venture between Manchester Airports Authority and BCEGI, a Chinese state-owned enterprise. But then BCEGI quietly withdrew from the venture, and a more modest development, with a couple of hotels, is now being built instead. That\u2019s a far cry from the major logistics hub and shopping complex advertised on the billboards \u2014 and, as usual, locals are left to pick up the pieces.<\/p>\n

Even so, my street-level journey offers opportunities for other reflections. High-level political debates on the People\u2019s Republic typically focus on whether and how much the UK should engage with China. Wander down Corporation Street and these questions feel irrelevant: we already live with China on intimate domestic terms. But this China is more ramshackle, improvised and buffeted by circumstances than the country we imagine as an all-powerful global force. This is doubly true when many Chinese developers have fallen foul of new liquidity regulations, passed by the CCP in 2020, requiring higher debt-to-equity ratios. Some 30 major firms have already breached these regulations, leading to investigations and arrest aplenty.<\/p>\n

Diplomatically speaking, anyway, it\u2019s clear that China is not just one thing \u2014 not merely the all-conquering threat to Britain\u2019s way of life, nor only the disordered builder. There are many Chinas, and it might be more effective to deal with each of them practically and pragmatically in turn. Diplomatically and politically, certainly, the muddled China that exists on our streets might be a better starting point in improving UK-China relations than the authoritarian monster of think-tank imaginings.<\/p>\n

What might that mean in practice? For one thing, the future of British cities and the wellbeing of people who live in them clearly depend on electing more transparent councils, which are, after all, responsible for how global capital can operate locally. If councils were less secretive, council-tax payers would know where redevelopment cash came from. Local authorities pretend this doesn\u2019t matter. But it does: Beijing money operates differently from Dubai money. Not every government controls investments abroad as thoroughly as the CCP, and not every government can force investors to nix foreign projects.<\/p>\n

At the same time, greater transparency would force councils to be honest about how much money is invested and how it\u2019ll refashion city neighborhoods. The Manchester combined authority responded to my FOI about Chinese capital by again insisting that it doesn\u2019t collect this kind of information. Perhaps it should. Greater honesty would also mean explaining how developments might change as a result of uncertain funding landscapes; how long construction will take; and what sites might be like to live with in the meantime. Instead of treating people like targets of public relations campaigns, dupes who need to be \u201csold\u201d the benefits of epic redevelopment, communities could instead be involved in deciding their city\u2019s future for themselves.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a broader problem here too. A shining city of towers is the dominant iconic image of urban life in the 21st century. But towers won\u2019t solve the housing shortage, nor improve the quality of everyday life in Manchester, at least without local intervention to ensure improvements happen. What the GMCA and its mayor \u2014 or PM-in-waiting \u2014 lack isn\u2019t capital. What they lack is the imagination to craft a viable city for the masses, something no amount of Chinese cash can buy.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Caroline Knowles\u2019s Uneasy Streets. How Chinese Money is Remaking Urban Britain<\/em> (Hurst) is out now.<\/p>\n

Read more Retiring the Nutty Professor<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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