Discourse Power | February 5, 2023
Discourse Power | February 5, 2023
China and Middle East security: A conversation with former PLA Senior Colonel Zhou Bo
Greetings from Jerusalem,
It's not every day that I get to have a one-on-one with the scholars I translate, but last Thursday was one of those days.
Former Chinese Senior Military Colonel and Tsinghua University China Forum expert Zhou Bo was a panelist at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) 16th annual international conference, held last week in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Zhou was kind enough to join me at the INSS studio after the event to talk about China's "new security architecture for the Middle East," which I discussed in detail in a recent Atlantic Council report, Full Throttle in Neutral.
Zhou and I consider the implications of Chinese architecture for America's current regional security framework, and what it means for its allies and partners. Most importantly, we ask what will China do if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon or is attacked by an Israeli-US-Gulf coalition; will Beijing support the coalition's efforts to prevent proliferation, or is the Sino-US rivalry so tense that China is willing to support Iran in its hostility toward the West in the same way that it supports Russia in its war of aggression in Ukraine?
(Links below)
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Thank you for tuning in,
Tuvia
"For China, apart from issues of sovereignty closer to home, we do not have many disagreements with the US. China is open-minded. Why don't we just abandon the Cold War mentality and join hands to make the world safer?”
You can also listen to our conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Soundcloud, and don't forget to subscribe and leave a rating for the INSS podcast series.
Special thanks to Ariel Nugrian, Galia Lavi, and Omer Weichselbaum.
Playing in the Background
Discourse Power is written by Tuvia Gering, a researcher at the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Israel-China Policy Center at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, and a Tikvah Fund’s Krauthammer Fellow. Any views expressed in this newsletter, as well as any errors, are solely those of the author. Follow Tuvia on Twitter @GeringTuvia