The Chinese Shopping Centre : Integration of a Western Commercial Format into Chinese Urban Space Being transposed to China and absorbed by its urban space the Western shopping centre undergoes a process of Sinicisationʺ which turns it into a spatial hybrid: a Western retail format shaped by distinctive features of Chinese space production and space use. To a large extent this study can be regarded as a marginal number of its kind which tries to scientifically understand the impact of a socially culturally and economically absolutely different urban environment on the model (ideal type) of the Western shopping centre.