Thomas Heberer has traveled to China every year for field research for more than four decades. The political scientist and East Asian scholar, holding a senior professorship at the University of Duisburg-Essen, is considered one of the most distinguished China experts in the world. He gained his knowledge and intuition for the people of China through his many research trips, often lasting months, across the entire country. This gives him a differentiated inside view of this vast, rapidly changing world power.