Senior Colonel Zhou Bo (retired) started his military service in 1979. He served in different posts in Guangzhou Air Force Regional Command. From 1993 he worked successively as staff officer, Deputy Director General of West Asia and Africa Bureau and then Deputy Director General of General Planning Bureau of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Ministry of National Defense of China, Chinese Defense Attaché to the Republic of Namibia and Director of the Centre for Security Cooperation in the Office for International Military Cooperation, Ministry of National Defense. He is now a senior fellow of Center for International Security and Strategy Tsinghua University.

Zhou Bo has published more than 100 essays and opinions in English in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal，The Diplomat, Financial Times, The Economist (by invitation), The Australian, Die Zeit, South China Morning Post, Strait Times, China~US Focus and China Daily, etc. He had interviews with BBC，NBC, CNBC, Euronews, Al Jazeera, Time, The Economist, ABC (Australia), Euronews, Channel NewsAsia (Singapore), Russia Today,NHK, and CGTN. He speaks as a PLA delegate at Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore and at Munich Security conference. He is supervisor to foreign post-graduate officers at PLA National Defense University.

Zhou Bo is an under-graduate of Air Force Engineering College  and a postgraduate of St Edmund College of Cambridge University (Mphill in International Relations). He was a visiting fellow to the Land Warfare Studies Centre of the Australian Army in 1999. He has attended various courses in Harvard University, Westminster University, PLA National Defense University, PLA University of Science and Technology for the National Defense and PLA Army Command College (Shijiazhuang).