What a Former Beijing Diplomat Says From Berlin

What does a diplomat know that the rest of us don't—and who gets to benefit from it after they leave?

William Klein spent more than two decades inside the US diplomatic machine. From 2016 to 2021, he held senior positions at the American embassy in Beijing, watching the US-China relationship unravel in real time. He worked at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT)—the de facto US embassy on the island—and staffed the State Department's China desk in Washington. His postings stretched across South Asia, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. Today, he works out of Berlin, as part of FGS Global, a strategic advisory and communications firm.

The career arc is clean on paper. But the questions it raises are anything but.

The Years That Shaped Everything

Klein's Beijing tenure—2016 to 2021—wasn't just any posting. It was the period when the US-China relationship transformed from managed rivalry into something closer to structured confrontation. The trade war launched under Trump's first term. The COVID-19 origins dispute. Hong Kong's National Security Law. Xinjiang. The diplomatic expulsions. Klein was inside the embassy as each of these fault lines cracked open.

His time at AIT adds another layer. Taiwan sits at the most volatile pressure point in the Indo-Pacific. The AIT functions as a real embassy without the formal title—handling security cooperation, trade, and political signaling between Washington and Taipei. Anyone who worked there during this period carries knowledge that governments, corporations, and investors would pay significant sums to access.

That's not a criticism. It's a description of how the market for geopolitical expertise works in 2026.

Why Berlin, Why Now

The choice of Berlin as a base is worth pausing on. Not Washington. Not Singapore. Not Tokyo. Berlin.

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Europe occupies an awkward middle position in the US-China competition. It is formally aligned with the West but economically entangled with China in ways that make clean decoupling politically painful. Germany in particular—home to Volkswagen, BASF, and Siemens—has deep industrial exposure to the Chinese market. European governments and corporations are hungry for people who can translate Washington's strategic intentions into actionable intelligence. A former senior Beijing diplomat, fluent in the logic of both governments, is exactly that kind of translator.

FGS Global operates at the intersection of geopolitics and corporate strategy. Its clients aren't think tanks—they're companies and institutions making real decisions about where to invest, where to operate, and how to manage political risk. In that context, Klein's value proposition is straightforward: he's been in the room.

The Revolving Door Question

Here's where it gets uncomfortable. The knowledge Klein accumulated—about Chinese leadership dynamics, Taiwan contingency planning, US diplomatic red lines—was built using public resources, public trust, and access that only a government badge could provide. When that knowledge migrates into private advisory work, who benefits?

This isn't a new debate. Washington's revolving door between government service and the private sector has been criticized for decades. The counterargument is equally familiar: experienced practitioners bring real-world judgment that think tanks and academics can't replicate, and their movement into the private sector creates a knowledge circulation that ultimately benefits policymakers too.

Both arguments have merit. Neither fully resolves the tension.

What's changed is the scale and speed of this migration. As US-China competition intensifies, the demand for people with firsthand China expertise has exploded. Former diplomats, intelligence analysts, and military officers are being absorbed by consulting firms, hedge funds, and technology companies at a pace that would have seemed unusual a decade ago. Klein's career is one data point in a much larger pattern.

What It Means for Everyone Else

For business leaders navigating the US-China split, figures like Klein represent a valuable resource—someone who can help decode policy signals before they become regulatory shocks. For policymakers, the outflow of experienced China hands into the private sector raises questions about institutional memory and whether government service can remain competitive in attracting and retaining talent.

For ordinary citizens on either side of the Pacific, the implications are more diffuse but no less real. The people shaping corporate strategy on US-China trade, semiconductor supply chains, and Taiwan risk are increasingly former government officials whose primary obligation is now to their clients, not the public.

That's not inherently wrong. But it's worth knowing.