Areas of Expertise

  • Technology and geopolitics 
  • China’s technical standardization power
  • China’s politics of 5G
  • EU-China relations
  • Foreign policy analysis of China
  • The political economy of the Chinese party-state
  • Hong Kong politics

Short Bio

Tim Rühlig is a Senior Research Fellow, Center for Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, and Technology at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). He has worked as a research fellow with DGAP’s former Technology and Global Affairs Program from September 2021 until December 2022. He investigates the growth of China’s power as the country’s footprint in digital technology increases. He will continue the research on technical standardization, wireless infrastructure, and the digitalization of seaports that he conducted in his previous position with the Swedish Institute of International Affairs from 2018 to 2021. Rühlig also coordinates the working group on high technology and innovation of the “China in Europe Research Network” (CHERN), an EU Cost Action.

Rühlig’s book China’s Foreign Policy Contradictions will be published by Oxford University Press in December 2021. His writing has appeared in China Perspectives, Development & Change, and China Review, among other publications. In 2018, he was the rotating chair of the European Think-Tank Network on China (ETNC).

Rühlig received his PhD from Frankfurt University with a thesis on sovereign state control in China’s foreign policy. He studied international relations and peace and conflict research at Frankfurt University and the Technical University of Darmstadt, as well as political science and cultural anthropology at Tübingen University.

Languages

English, German

 

[Last updated: January, 2023]

Contributions

Why Germany’s New China Strategy Needs to Go Beyond Symbolism

Germany’s China policy was long shaped by the country’s economic interests and the illusion that engagement could help bring about change. Beijing’s more assertive foreign policy has led to an awakening in Berlin. But how far will the German government go in redefining its relations with China?

Author/s
Tim Rühlig
IPQ
Cover Section
Creation date

A Sovereign Europe ... and China

Reducing strategic dependencies vis-à-vis Beijing, especially in the realm of technology, is easier said than conceptualized, let alone put in practice.

Author/s
Tim Rühlig
IPQ
Cover Section
Creation date

China’s Deteriorating Image

Germans, by their own admission, don’t know that much about China, but their skepticism is high and rising. Beijing has failed to significantly profit from the alienation of the German population from Trump-led America.

Author/s
Tim Rühlig
IPQ
Creation date

Tim Rühlig

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