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Interviewer: You mentioned China’s overwhelming military strength. There’s not a lot of understanding, especially in the West, about China’s military capabilities, often framed as a "threat." As a retired Senior Colonel of the People’s Liberation Army, could you talk about China’s military capabilities? Are they truly a threat, as portrayed in Western media?

Zhou Bo: That’s an interesting question because sometimes I also do not have a clear conclusion and have to think about it. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is certainly developing rapidly. However, it hasn’t fought a war since 1979. This raises a key question: Can the PLA fight effectively?

The answer is yes. If you compare it to the past, after the founding of the People’s Republic, China basically had a war every decade until 1979, when we had the last war with Vietnam. Since then, China has focused on economic development. This shift has actually provided the economic resources to strengthen our military.

To provide some perspective, we can compare the PLA to Russia’s military. Before the war in Ukraine, Russia was universally considered the second-strongest military after the United States, if not neck-and-neck. However, the PLA’s budget is three times larger than Russia’s, although four times smaller than America’s. The PLA also boasts the world’s largest standing army and navy in terms of ship numbers.

China is continuously developing state-of-the-art weapons, some of which even surpass those available to Russia.Putting all this together, I would say that China’s ambition to become a world-class military is logical and openly announced: we aim to achieve this by 2049, and now we’re talking about speeding up this process.

And there are two more questions. What is a world-class military? How can China achieve a "world-class military" status with a defense budget of only 1.5% of GDP, which is lower than NATO’s 2% of GDP standard?

For the first question, in my opinion, the definition of a "world-class military" varies. If we consider only the United States to hold that status, then China still has a long way to go. However, if there can be more than one world-class military, many would already consider the PLA to be in that category.

Let’s assume for now the US is the only one, and China still had a long way to go. I believe there are certain advantages for the PLA. First is the political determination of the Chinese leadership and the entire nation; as I said, this isn’t a secret, we want to make our military world-class. Second, China’s military budget is sustainable and three times bigger than Russia’s; it is the second-largest globally because the military is supported by the largest industry in the world. China’s shipbuilding capabilities is more than 200 times bigger than that of the United States. With all this, we have confidence.

That said, there remains a fundamental dilemma: proving the PLA’s world-class status is challenging without engaging in conflict. But my answer to this is very simple. Imagine having a sword—of course you’d want it to be very sharp, but you wouldn’t test it by chopping off someone’s head.  Having peace over 40 years made China the world’s second largest economy, it also helped to alleviate poverty of 800 million people. This peace is invaluable, we should enjoy it and try our best to maintain it.

That matters tremendously for the world; if you look at world history, you seldom find examples of a rising power that’s so peaceful. The West would describe China as “coercive” and “aggressive” but they can’t give a concrete example of Chinese aggression anywhere. The only incident is a deadly brawl between Chinese and Indian troops along the Himalayas; but even that deadly brawl was only done in a stone age manner, with no shooting. That means they knew they shouldn’t shoot at each other under any circumstances.

Interviewer: Often when we talk about war, we are measuring it by how much a nation has won wars. However, for China, it has had a long period of peace, which makes it challenging to assess military strength. This leads to another question. In recent years, U.S. think tanks like the Rand Corporation and the Center for a New American Security, both very close to military planners, have conducted war simulations involving China. What do you think of China’s readiness for war, with the US in particular? Where do you think such a scenario would lead, because planning and simulating these war games would lead to a pessimistic outlook. What do you think of such war simulations, and where might such a conflict between the US and China erupt?

Zhou Bo: I’m aware of these war games conducted by U.S. think tanks. However, I caution against taking their results at face value; to wrongly believe that China certainly is superior, that shouldn’t be what we think.

When discussing potential conflict scenarios between China and the United States, there are two main areas of concern: the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Of the two, I consider the South China Sea more dangerous. I wrote about this in my article titled “it’s the South China Sea, stupid”.

In the South China Sea, we face challenges in fully controlling the situation due to frequent U.S. activities, including naval patrols, reconnaissance missions, and freedom of navigation operations. China cannot stop these activities. These operations are often hyped in the media, but they conduct about 20 to 21 times annually against around 15 countries, with just one or two focused on China.

Nonetheless, the close reconnaissance and surveillance activities—whether at sea or in the air—create the risk of dangerous encounters. China views these actions as threats to our sovereignty and territorial integrity, while the United States considers them routine exercises of freedom of navigation. I had led a delegation to the Pentagon to talk about the legal implications of these freedom of navigation operations in 2013; we couldn’t agree much on this issue. UNCLOS is ambiguous enough for both sides to justify their position, sometimes even quoting the same article.

If the PLA continues to grow stronger, China’s tolerance for what we perceive as provocations may decrease. Pentagon reports indicate over 180 interceptions in two years—roughly one every four days. While I hope for peaceful resolutions, there’s always the risk that another collision could act as a wake-up call for both sides.

For the South China Sea, these things can’t be avoided. On the other hand, the Taiwan Strait is different. Taiwan cannot physically move away, time is on China’s side as the PLA grows stronger. No matter how the Taiwanese authority continues its separatistic moves, by and large time is on our side.

Then, there’s the billion-dollar question of whether the US would intervene or not. I don’t have any answer, given America’s strategic ambiguity. However, I believe that for them, China poses a bigger strategic ambiguity, whether China would use force or not. That’s why American generals keep on guessing.

However, I wish to quote US secretary of defense Lloyd Austin’s remarks at Shangri-la Dialogue last year: conflict is not imminent or inevitable. I highly value these remarks, and included them in my article in Foreign Affairs, because he talks with authority, not only as the senior-most defense official, but because his remarks should in theory be supported by intelligence. His remarks are a direct denial of remarks by those generals and admirals. He has demonstrated confidence in the situation across the Taiwan Strait, and we are still talking about peaceful reunification. Use of force is not a given, and we still hope for the best.

Interviewer: I think it’s a great point you made about the risk of conflict in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait; for the US, there’s a lot of guessing, with 2025 or 2027 often mentioned as dates for a Chinese invasion. Could you elaborate the overall situation on Taiwan from the military and strategic perspective? This is where we hear most the hype from the US, but you also have leaders like Austin refuting the idea of conflict as imminent; there seems to be a lot of mixed messaging. What is the Chinese military’s perspective on Taiwan, given what we hear from the US media, is there a big difference?

Zhou Bo: From the Chinese military, it’s very simple: you have to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, so it needs to become stronger.

People always talks about China’s stick, but people forget that China has also offered a lot of carrots. For example, in Fujian Province, which faces Taiwan, Taiwanese residents receive preferential treatment, including access to education, residency permits, and providing electricity and perhaps buildings a bridge between our side and those outer islands. These efforts are meant to convince Taiwanese people that we can live together. Before COVID, there were reportedly 1.5 million Taiwanese in mainland China, mostly near and in Shanghai. This is understandable because that’s the best developed area in mainland China. Even though two sides have different political systems, people go to places with better economic opportunities and politics does not matter as much; these Taiwanese people are not poor, they’re middle class or above. I am confident that, as the world is becoming smaller with globalization and AI, there will be greater cross-strait integration and people will have better understanding of each other.

Interviewer: The current leadership of Taiwan, Lai Ching-Te, he recently came out and said, if China wants to reunify Taiwan, why doesn’t it also talk to Russia about lands long in the past. Meanwhile, Taiwan separatism goes along with US military presence, because there are US special forces just a few miles from mainland China, in Kinmen. We’ve talked about the Chinese military’s role, but there’s also the US military involvement, including weapon sales, special forces and military training of Taiwan forces. How does China view these developments, especially the role of the United States?

Zhou Bo: From China’s perspective, the key to avoiding conflict is to allow China to maintain the hope for peaceful reunification. China will not look for non-peaceful tools listed in our anti-secession law, as long as there is still room for reunification. If the U.S. or Taiwan were to take actions that eliminate this hope—such as openly supporting Taiwanese independence—it would force Beijing to reconsider its approach. Then, this would be the role of the US military, in the eyes of Beijing: are you supporting Taiwan’s independence move or not? Because, if you’re doing that, it will not serve the U.S. interests.

This is why high-profile visits, like that of Nancy Pelosi, escalate tensions unnecessarily and harms the U.S. interests more. While President Biden claimed he couldn’t intervene due to the balance of powers in the U.S. government, such reasoning doesn’t convince us; we aren’t so na?ve to believe that he couldn’t call her to stop the visit, because he might consider such a move harmful to his personal interest, and Pelosi’s visit not that harmful. As we have seen, the PLA’s four-day live-fire military exercises following Pelosi’s visit demonstrated the seriousness of the situation, and the subsequent increase in PLA aircraft crossing the median line in the Taiwan Strait has signaled an irreversible change to the status quo.

Every provocation—whether by the Taiwanese authorities or the U.S.—risks altering the status quo in ways that may not be reversible.

Interviewer: What do you think are the motivations for these provocations? With the war games and South China Sea disputes, there’s a lot of ambiguity on the Chinese side, but how does the Chinese side view US motivations with regards to its growing military presence in the Pacific, and Taiwan specifically? We’re seeing more and more military, political and diplomatic provocations that seem to align with each other.

Zhou Bo: Motivations of the others are always the most difficult to discern, but interests are easier to identify. For example, selling arms to Taiwan benefits the U.S. military-industrial complex. Claims about turning Taiwan into a “porcupine” are just a convenient justification for these sales.

As for political figures like Nancy Pelosi, because she’s been championing support for democracy, and knew that she was at the end of her term, she might have just wanted to do something to be in the highlight. We have to judge people by their interests rather than motivations.

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