Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik – Pioneer of modern China research

“I have spent a very significant part of my professional life making people aware of this repeatedly: You can’t think of the world without China,” says Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik. Since the mid-1970s, the now 68-year-old has been intensively involved with China. The influence of her older brother – a Mao enthusiast – and a year abroad in the US, where China was already much more prominent in the press than here, awakened her interest in the distant country. So, after graduating from high school in 1973, she took up Sinology, Japanese studies, and political science studies in Bonn – the beginning of a lifelong passion.