June 2014

Sebastian Heilmann is a professor of Chinese political economy at the University of Trier, Germany. He was the founding director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), a China think tank in Berlin.His research and publications focus on China’s political system and political economy. With Elizabeth J. Perry, he co-edited the volume Mao's Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China (Harvard University Press, 2011). His book China's Foreign Political and Economic Relations: An Unconventional Global Power (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), co-authored with Dirk H. Schmidt, brings a European perspective to the international debate on China’s global rise.

Carsten Boyer Thøgersen is the Director of Copenhagen Business Confucius Institute at Copenhagen Business School and a former diplomat with Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and the European Commission. After graduating in 1978 from Aarhus University, Denmark with an M.A. in political science and a B.A. in modern Chinese language, Thøgersen’s entire career has focused on Chinese affairs and China where he was posted for more than 20 years. From 1981 to 1985 Thøgersen was Associate Professor in international politics and Director and founder of China Information Service at Aarhus University. After one year as manager in the China Division of Danish Turnkey Dairies Ltd. in 1986 Thøgersen was posted at the Danish Embassy in Beijing and from 1988 at the EU Delegation in Beijing. From 1992 to 1996 Thøgersen was with the EU Commission’s Southeast Asia and China Division in Brussels. From 1997 Thøgersen was Head of Department for Commercial and Economic Affairs at the Danish Embassy in Beijing, in 2003 Consul-General in Guangzhou, in 2005 Consul-General in Shanghai and in 2009 Head of the China Task Force at Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Copenhagen. Thøgersen has written and edited a number of books on Chinese affairs. In 2012, as senior research fellow at Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Thøgersen did the first translation into a Western language of a rare interview which Xi Jinping, then Governor of Fujian Province, gave to the magazine Zhonghua Ernü in 2000.