He is co-founder of the Association of Social Science Research on China (ASC) and was on the Advisory Board of the Europe-China Academic Network (ECAN) of the European Commission.
In 2000/2001 he collected 250,000 Deutsche Mark among several German institutions for establishing a primary school for Yi minority children in Meigu County including a scholarship program.
Throughout the following decades, Heberer extended his research to study such diverse topics as the development of China’s private sector, rural urbanization and social change, the political and social role of private entrepreneurs in China and Vietnam, the diffusion of intellectual ideas into politics, environmental governance, urban communities (shequ), mobilized participation and co-production; administrative reforms; new patterns of governance in rural areas; and the agency of local cadres.
He also worked on new patterns of political representation from a comparative perspective, and on social disciplining and civilizing processes in the context of modernization.
[citation needed][14][15][16] Heberer describes China's robust state capacity as based on the following five factors: (1) the legitimacy of its political system as viewed by its citizens, (2) the ability to exercise social control and regulation, (3) coercive resources, (4) the capacity to consult and collaborate with emerging social groups and organizations to balance conflicting interests, and (5) the ability to learn from failures and mistakes.
After their statements met with criticism from within the German-speaking community of China scholars – which pointed in particular to the highly restricted environment in which the visit took place –, Heberer and Schmidt-Glintzer published another piece a week later in which they attempted to explain their trip.
[23] On the occasion of his 70th birthday in 2017, Zhejiang University Press published a Chinese collection of Heberer’s major research articles on China (托马斯∙海贝勒中国研究文选), edited by the political scientist Yu Jianxing.