Sebastian Heilmann (born 1965 in Offenbach am Main, Germany) is a German political scientist and sinologist. He serves as the founding president of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin.Mercator Institute for China Studies
President: Sebastian Heilmann
Heilmann is a professor for the political economy of China at the University of Trier with many publications on China's political system, economic policy and international relations.University of Trier
Chair in Government: Politics and Economy of China
/ref>

Education

From 1984 to 1990, Heilmann studied

Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

Chinese Studies Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilization p ...

and

Comparative Linguistics Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language and comparative linguistics aim ...

at the University of Tuebingen, Germany, and at

Nanjing University Nanjing University (NJU) is a public university in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. It is affiliated and sponsored by the Ministry of Education. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction. The univers ...

, People's Republic of China (PRC). In 1990, he received a master's degree (M.A.) in Political Science from the University of Tuebingen. Several research fellowships in the United States of America (

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

) and in East Asia (Beijing and Taipei) followed. In 1993, he was awarded his PhD from the Faculty of Law and Economics at the

Saarland University Saarland University (, ) is a public research university located in Saarbrücken, the capital of the German state of Saarland. It was founded in 1948 in Homburg in co-operation with France and is organized in six faculties that cover all major ...

, Saarbrücken, Germany.

Academic career

From 1994 to 1999, Heilmann worked as senior researcher for Chinese politics at the German Institute for Asian Affairs in Hamburg (today GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies). In 1999, he completed his second thesis (“habilitation”) on “The Politics of Economic Reform in China and Russia” at the University of Muenster, Germany. He briefly taught at this university as a lecturer. In the same year, he was offered a position as full university professor for comparative government at the department of political science at the University of Trier. From 2000 to 2006, Heilmann headed the multi-disciplinary “Research Group on Equity Market Regulation (REGEM)” dealing with the political economy of equity markets in a comparative perspective. From 2005 to 2006, he stayed as a visiting fellow at the Fairbank Center of Harvard University. His research there focused on distinctive patterns of the Chinese policy process and China's economic governance in particular. In a multi-year research and publication project about the foundations of “adaptive authoritarianism” in China he collaborated with

Elizabeth J. Perry Elizabeth J. Perry, FBA (; born 9 September 1948) is an American political scientist specialized in Chinese politics and history. She currently is the Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University. She is a fellow of the American ...

(

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

) as a Harvard-Yenching Coordinate Research Scholar in 2007 and 2009. In 2011 and 2012, he was a visiting fellow at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

(Merton College and University of Oxford China Centre). As principal investigator from 2010 to 2013, Heilmann headed the project group “China’s industrial and technology policies” within the national research network on “Governance in China” sponsored by the

German Federal Ministry of Education and Research The Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (; abbreviated BMFTR) is a Cabinet of Germany, cabinet-level ministry of Germany. It is headquartered in Bonn, with an office in Berlin. The Ministry provides funding for research projects an ...

. In 2009 and 2012 he was appointed member of the editorial boards of the academic journals ''Modern China'' and ''

The China Quarterly ''The China Quarterly'' (CQ) is a British triple-anonymous peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1960 on contemporary China including Taiwan. It is considered one of the most important academic journals about China in the world and is p ...

''. Since 2000, he has been the editor of the study series China Analysis, an academic online publication dealing with contemporary political and economic developments in the Greater China region.China Analysis n Germanbr>Editor: Sebastian Heilmann
/ref> Since 2013, he serves as the founding director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin,. In 2014, Heilmann was appointed as one of 15 German representatives to the German-Chinese Dialogue Forum.

Selected publications

Red Swan: How Unorthodox Policy-Making Facilitated China's Rise
Hong Kong:

Chinese University Press The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press is the university press A university press is an academic publishing house specializing in monographs and scholarly journals. They are often an integral component of a large research university. The ...

, 2018.
''China's Political System''
(editor). Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
China’s Core Executive: Leadership Styles, Structures and Processes under Xi Jinping
MERICS Papers on China 1, Berlin, 2016. (co-edited with Matthias Stepan) * ''China’s Foreign Political and Economic Relations: An Unconventional Global Power'' (co-authored with Dirk H. Schmidt). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman &Littlefield, 2014. * “The Reinvention of Development Planning in China, 1993-2012” (co-authored with Oliver Melton), ''Modern China'', November 2013. * ''Mao’s Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China'' (co-edited with

). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011. * “Policy Experimentation in China’s Economic Rise”, ''Studies in Comparative International Development'', March 2008. * ''The Political System of the PRC'' n German Wiesbaden: Springer VS, two editions, 2002 and 2004. * ''The Politics of Economic Reform in China and Russia'' n German Hamburg: German Institute for Asian Affairs, 2000.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heilmann, Sebastian Living people German political scientists German sinologists University of Tübingen alumni Nanjing University alumni Harvard University alumni Stanford University alumni Fellows of Merton College, Oxford 1965 births German male non-fiction writers Saarland University alumni