The Beijing–Berlin Connection

Parke Nicholson

Parke Nicholson was previously the Senior Research Associate at AICGS. He was selected to participate in the Munich Young Leaders 2016 program at the 52nd Munich Security Conference. Previously, he worked at the Center for the National Interest and the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2008, he served on the foreign policy staff at Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign headquarters. He has also worked abroad in Austria and Germany: in 2005 through the Fulbright Program in Klagenfurt and in 2010-2011 as a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow working in the German Foreign Office for the Coordinator of Transatlantic Cooperation and for Daimler AG’s Political Intelligence unit in Stuttgart.

Parke has recently published in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, The Baltimore Sun, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He received his MA in International Relations from The Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University and a BA in History and Violin Performance at The College of Wooster in Ohio.

It is peak tourist season in China for European leaders. Shortly after the first bailout package to Greece in 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel celebrated her 56th birthday with Xi’an’s famous terra cotta warriors. She was accompanied by the usual coterie of German industry leaders who inked contracts in the tens of billions and has since cajoled her entire cabinet to join the annual pilgrimage to Beijing. Merkel took her eighth multiday tour this summer just weeks after the latest chapter in the financial crisis.

The article originally appeared in Foreign Affairs on August 13, 2015. Continue reading here. (This article is behind a paywall.)

The views expressed are those of the author(s) alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the American-German Institute.