Areas of Expertise

Technology and geopolitics
China’s technical standardization power
China’s politics of 5G
EU-China and Germany-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 in the Center for Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, and Technology at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). From November 2023 until July 2024, he is seconded to the European Commission where he serves as a “China fellow” at I.D.E.A, the advisory hub of the president. He also coordinates the working group on high technology and innovation of the “China in Europe Research Network” (CHERN), an EU Cost Action.

Rühlig investigates the growth of China’s power as the country’s footprint in digital technology increases, as well as EU-China and Germany-China relations. He continues to pursue the research on technical standardization and wireless infrastructure that he began conducting when he worked at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs from 2018 to 2021 and as a research fellow with DGAP’s former Technology and Global Affairs Program from September 2021 until December 2022.

Rühlig’s book China’s Foreign Policy Contradictions was published by Oxford University Press in early 2022. 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.