Gunter Schubert (Tübingen)

This presentation summarizes and discusses major findings of several years of extensive fieldwork on private entrepreneurs and state-business relations in China which are currently put into a monograph. This book intends to reinvigorate the ‘old debate’ on the political acquiescence of China’s private entrepreneurs by arguing that they have become a “strategic group” within the Chinese polity. While they do not openly challenge the current regime, they continuously alter the power balance within the current regime coalition, which connects them to the party-state at all administrative levels. As the future of Chinese socialism depends, arguably, on the sound development of the private-sector economy, much speaks for increasing entrepreneurial influence within the current regime coalition over time. However, the Chinese party state under Xi Jinping has taken a number of precautions against this scenario, stretching from stern screening of entrepreneurial behavior to a set of new strategies to bring the private sector under effective economic control by the party state.

Gunter Schubert is Chair Professor of Greater China Studies at Eberhard Karls University Tübingen. He is also the founder and current director of the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan (ERCCT) at this university and EINSTEIN PLUS Fellow at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies (GEAS), Freie Universität Berlin. Prof. Schubert specializes in local governance and policy implementation in the PRC, cross-strait political economy and Taiwanese domestic politics. Recently, he has embarked on a project on comparative migration governance in East Asia and another one on China’s Asia policy. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and conducts regular fieldwork in the PRC, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Website: www.uni-tuebingen.de/fakultaeten/philosophische-fakultaet/fachbereiche/aoi/sinologie/personen/greater-china-studies/mitarbeiter-ausrichtung/prof-dr-gunter-schubert/