This paper focuses on Chinese immigration and its spatial manifestations in Britain in the past two decades. The 1980s can be recorded as a turning-point in the history of Chinese immigration to Britain, marking a substantial increase in the number and diversity of Chinese immigrants. The same decade should also be considered a landmark in contemporary British urban history, as it featured a major transformation in the Chinese urban landscape. Systematic analyses of census data reveal that, since the 1980s, Chinese immigration to Britain has undergone a process of dramatic structural transformation that has facilitated the decentralisation of the Chinatown enclave economy and the spatial diffusion of Chinese residents. The spatial configuration of 'newwave' immigration has been a regular rank-size relationship of residential distributions. This urban system contains many small and diffused clusters, a lesser number of medium-size Chinatowns, but a few large Chinatowns. The systematic distribution of different Chinese settlements signifies the Chinese representation in different industrial sectors, as well as the equilibrium outcome of the organisational forces of these sectors.