Univ.Prof. Dr. Christian Göbel, M.A.

Christian Göbel is a Chair Professor of the Politics of Contemporary China, who has extensively researched state-society relations, local governance, and popular contention in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan.

He received his MA degree from Heidelberg University and his PhD from the University of Duisburg-Essen. Before joining the University of Vienna in 2014, he held academic positions at Lund University (Sweden) and Heidelberg University (Germany).

Christian’s research journey began with an investigation into the nexus between political corruption and family-based networks in rural Taiwan. His academic interests soon expanded to the People's Republic of China, where he explored the origins, implementation, and eventual failure of a policy aimed at simplifying rural taxation. Intrigued by the dynamics of policy innovation, he then focussed on how information and communication technologies facilitate interactions between citizens and politicians in China. As researching local politics became very challenging following Xi Jinping’s rise to power, his focus shifted to understanding how citizens use the Internet to assert demands and occasionally oppose the party-state. By leveraging advanced data analytics and machine learning techniques, his work has provided insights into the relationship between state control, digital technology and popular protest.

His research has been supported by several prestigious grants, including an ERC Starting Grant on the microfoundations of authoritarian responsiveness (https://responsiveness.univie.ac.at) and a Horizon2020 Grant aimed at fostering a deeper and more sustainable understanding of contemporary China in Europe and laying the groundwork for a future-oriented collaboration between the EU and China. He leads the work package on domestic politics and, together with his team, is developing a publicly accessible database containing Chinese laws, regulations, and other relevant documents, intended to serve as a resource for academia, politics, journalism, business, and the general public (https://reconnectchina.univie.ac.at).