Thomas Heberer

Thomas Heberer, Ph.D. (born 13 November 1947 in Offenbach/Main) is a Senior professor of Chinese Politics & Society at the University Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He studied Social Anthropology (major), Philosophy, Political Science, and Chinese Studies in Frankfurt, Göttingen, Mainz and Heidelberg. In 1977 he 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 a translator and reader for the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing for more than four years (1977–81). During that time he witnessed the post-Cultural Revolution events in China and the gradual development of reform policies there.

Heberer worked from 1983 to 1985 as a research fellow with the Oversea's Museum in Bremen (Übersee-Museum Bremen), where he was put 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, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, on the development of the private economic sector in China. This project was followed by his habilitation (post-doctoral degree) thesis on the role of the individual (“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 1988 to 1991 Heberer acted as visiting professor at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Duisburg (Chair of East Asian Politics). In 1991 he was appointed professor of Chinese Economic Studies at the University for Applied Sciences in Bremen. In 1992 he was appointed to the Chair of East Asian Politics at the University of Trier and in 1998 to a Chair at the University of Duisburg-Essen's Institute of East Asian Studies. Upon his retirement in February 2013 he was appointed Senior Professor by the university president. From 2013 to 2015 he was Chair Professor of Public Administration at Zhejiang University. He is also a Permanent Visiting Professor at several Chinese Universities, including Zhejiang University, Renmin University, and Nankai University.

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