Thomas Heberer (sinologist)


Thomas Heberer is a German sinologist. He is senior professor of Chinese politics and society at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Education

Thomas Heberer studied Social Anthropology, Philosophy, Political Science, and Chinese Studies in Frankfurt, Göttingen, Mainz and Heidelberg.
In 1977, Heberer completed his Ph.D. at the University of Bremen on the Mass Line concept of the Chinese Communist Party. The same year he went to China, where he worked as an editor of the German section of the Peking Review in Beijing for more than four years. During this time, he witnessed China’s early reform and transformation process first-hand.

Career

Heberer worked from 1983 to 1985 as a research fellow with the Overseas Museum in Bremen, where he was in charge of the Chinese Collection and established the museum’s permanent China exhibit. He was then appointed as a research fellow at the Institute of Geography of the University of Bremen and carried out a research project on the development of the private economic sector in China, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. His ensuing habilitation thesis dealt with the role of the informal economic sector of urban and social development in China. In 1989 he received the venia legendi, or authorization to lecture, in Political Science at the University of Bremen.
From 1991 to 1992, Heberer served as a professor of Chinese Economic Studies at the University for Applied Sciences in Bremen. From 1992 to 1998, he was a professor of political science with a focus on East Asian politics at the University of Trier. From 1998 to 2013, he held a chair professorship of political science with a focus on East Asia at the University of Duisburg-Essen’s Institute of East Asian Studies. Upon his retirement in February 2013, he was appointed Senior Professor of Chinese Politics and Society by the university president. He continues to actively pursue research on China and its political and social development.
Heberer has held visiting professorships at: Seoul National University, University of Washington; China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics; National Taiwan University and National Sun Yat-sen University; Zhejiang University; University of Vienna and Peking University.
Thomas Heberer is on the editorial board of several academic journals, including the International Journal of Political Science & Diplomacy, The China Quarterly, the Journal of China in Comparative Perspective, the European Journal of East Asian Studies, the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, the Journal of Chinese Governance, the Chinese Political Science Review, the International Quarterly for Asian Studies, the International Journal of Political Science & Diplomacy, and the journal 国外理论动态/Foreign Theoretical Trends. He is co-founder of the Association of Social Science Research on China and was on the Advisory Board of the Europe-China Academic Network of the European Commission.
Heberer was the founding director and co-director of the Confucius Institute "Metropole Ruhr" at the University of Duisburg-Essen from 2008 to 2021.
In 1998 he hosted the “Second International Yi Conference” at the University of Trier, and in 2006 he organized a major exhibition on the history, culture, religion, and society of the Yi at the Duisburg Historical Museum. In 2000/2001 he collected 250,000 Deutsche Mark among several German institutions for establishing a primary school for Yi minority children in Meigu County including a scholarship program.
Heberer is active as a political consultant. Among other things, he has worked on issues such as urban diplomacy or academic and cultural exchange.

Research

Heberer conducted his first field research in 1981 on the issue of Chinese nationalities’ policies and development policies in ethnic minority areas among the Yi, one of the largest ethnic minorities in China, in the Liangshan Mountains in Southwestern Sichuan province. He has continued to work on various aspects of the Yi society such as ethnic entrepreneur and environmental governance, and has been actively involved in creating academic and public awareness for the Yi minority.
Throughout the following decades, Heberer extended his research to study such diverse topics as the development of China’s private sector, rural urbanization and social change, the political and social role of private entrepreneurs in China and Vietnam, the diffusion of intellectual ideas into politics, environmental governance, urban communities, mobilized participation and co-production; administrative reforms; new patterns of governance in rural areas; and the agency of local cadres.
Heberer has also examined the formal and informal political participation and organizational behavior of social groups in China. In the process, he has further developed the sociological concept of “strategic groups” in the context of both local cadres and entrepreneurial groups in China. In addition, he studied social and policy innovations in China, and critical junctures of authoritarian systems. He also worked on new patterns of political representation from a comparative perspective, and on social disciplining and civilizing processes in the context of modernization.
Heberer describes China's robust state capacity as based on the following five factors: the legitimacy of its political system as viewed by its citizens, the ability to exercise social control and regulation, coercive resources, the capacity to consult and collaborate with emerging social groups and organizations to balance conflicting interests, and the ability to learn from failures and mistakes.
In an op-ed in September 2023 together with another German China scholar, Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, the authors opted for the release of sanctions against China because they considered the situation in Xinjiang as having shown "clear signs of a return to 'normality'". After their statements met with criticism from within the German-speaking community of China scholars – which pointed in particular to the highly restricted environment in which the visit took place –, Heberer and Schmidt-Glintzer published another piece a week later in which they attempted to explain their trip.

Selected publications

Heberer has authored or co-authored more than 40 books and has also edited or co-edited more than 25 volumes in German, English and Chinese. His English book publications include:

Books authored

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Books edited

  • , The Power of Ideas – Intellectual Input and Political Change in East and Southeast Asia, Copenhagen 2006
  • , Regime Legitimacy in Contemporary China: Institutional Change and Stability, London/New York 2008
He also attaches great importance to publishing in Chinese and presenting his work to a wider audience in China.
On the occasion of his 70th birthday in 2017, Zhejiang University Press published a Chinese collection of Heberer’s major research articles on China, edited by the political scientist Yu Jianxing.
Among his book publications in Chinese are:
  • 作为战略群体的企业家. 中国私营企业家的社会与政治功能研究, Beijing 2003.
  • 凉山彝族企业家. 社会与制度变迁的承载着, Beijing 2005.
  • 从群众到公民. 中国的政治参与, Beijing 2009.
  • , 中国与德国的环境治理比较的视角, Beijing 2012.
  • , 主动的地方政治。作为战略群体的县乡干部, Beijing, December 2013.
  • , 中共的治理与适应：比较的视野, Beijing 2015.
  • 东普鲁士与中国——追溯一段不解之缘, Wuhan: Wuhan University Press 2022.