The Black Box: Inside China’s Military Mind

**Zhou Bo** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:05)
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**SPEAKER_3** (0:37)
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**Jane Perlez** (0:45)
Hi, it's Jane Perlez. You're listening to FaceOff, a show about the U.S.-China relationship. After a short break, we're back with some new interviews. But if you haven't had a chance to listen to the rest of season three yet, I encourage you to go back and check out some of our recent episodes about Trump and Xi Jinping, AI and Jensen Huang, China's growing military might, and much more. Today, we have a return guest, Zhou Bo, a retired colonel in the People's Liberation Army. Xi Jinping has unleashed a massive purge of the Chinese Army, the biggest since the early days of Communist China. Nearly three dozen senior generals have been demoted or disappeared. Almost all have been accused of corruption. Then, this past January, the most senior general, General Zhang Youxia, essentially Xi Jinping's number two in the army, disappeared. No one outside of China and not many inside China seem to know what's going on. There's a reason the Chinese military is known as a black box. I was eager to discuss this black box with Colonel Zhou. He has been retired from the Chinese military for some years, but before we started taping, he made it clear he couldn't talk about the purges, including the disappearance of General Zhang. It was too sensitive, and his reluctance was understandable. However, that didn't stop us from discussing everything from Greenland to Taiwan to China's military strength in the South China Sea. I caught up with Colonel Zhou after he attended the Munich Security Conference, a big international meetup where global leaders debate the world's problems.
I started by asking if Marco Rubio's mildly conciliatory speech at the conference had surprised him.

**Zhou Bo** (2:44)
Nothing has really surprised me, because even before Rubio's speech, I actually talked to some people, and we have concurred that this speech would be very much different from JD Vance's speech last year. So he said exactly the things that I have anticipated, that is a sugar-coating American strategy.

**Jane Perlez** (3:12)
You're not surprised that Rubio was more polite than Vance last year?

**Zhou Bo** (3:16)
Understandably, he's more polite because he's a diplomat, right? But the point is, no matter what Rubio said, nobody actually would pay much attention to this kind of rhetorics because I believe Europeans have taken a deep breath and are waiting for the storm to come. And what does that mean? That means probably for the first time we're really going to see Europeans become more independent militarily, strategically, and in ten years time, I believe we're going to see a Europe that is different. And how different? Well, I think the Atlantic Alliance is still there, although much weakened, but Europe will become stronger, at least militarily.

**Jane Perlez** (4:11)
And I suspect that China will make effort in the next few years to become much, much more friendly with this new Europe. Is that right?

**Zhou Bo** (4:19)
Well, it's not that China will become more friendly, but the other way around. Europe will become much more friendly toward China. Because you see, China always talk about the importance of Europe, yeah? And given that China's foreign policy is quite consistent, therefore, there's no doubt about China's good wishes, you know, to develop a good relationship with Europe. The only thing is that the war in Ukraine has very much solid China's relationship with Europe, because Europe actually has placed some kind of wishful thinking on China. For them, it is as simple as someone in China picking up the phone and ask President Putin to stop. This is exactly what they said. Of course, things are not so simple. Things have come to the second stage when Europeans have basically give up this kind of wishful thinking and now are focused on deepening economic ties with China.

**Jane Perlez** (5:25)
Sounds to me as though Trump may have hurt himself and the United States by this policy towards Europe, because he's basically shoving Europe towards China, according to you.

**Zhou Bo** (5:36)
You seem to suggest that Trump has a purpose in doing this kind of things towards Europeans or even towards China. But the thing is, I don't believe he has a policy, right? He acts on his instincts and he believes his instincts are right. But at 100 days of his second term, I was asked by the English newspaper, The Guardian, how I thought about it. I said the damage he has already done is more than all his predecessors combined. But now I believe I'm rather conservative in that regard.