Senior Colonel Zhou Bo (ret.), senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy (CISS) and China Forum expert, participated in the 16th annual international conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Israel, where he shared his views on great power competition and the challenges facing Israel, among other topics.

The Ukraine crisis is essentially the result of NATO’s continuous expansion despite Russia’s warnings, which eventually led to a backlash from the latter, said Zhou. If people do not understand the root cause of the war, if NATO and Russia do not reach a compromise, there will never be peace in Europe. China has never been involved in the Ukraine issue, nor has it provided any assistance. Due to its close relations with both Russia and Ukraine, China has been exercising extreme caution on such issues; but its position should not be misunderstood, as it has made clear that sovereignty must be respected. Furthermore, China has offered a new peace proposal that can play an active role in resolving the crisis.

On China-US relations, Zhou Bo believes that the US has lost some of its self-confidence because of China’s rapid development. In the past four decades, China’s peaceful rise has never led it to export its ideology or wage war, and it is the hope of China that its relationship with the US will be one in which cooperation trumps competition and, in the worst-case scenario, avoids a shift from competition to confrontation.

Finally, Zhou believes that there is no need for Israel to choose sides between China and America. Israel, one of the biggest allies of the US, should nonetheless weigh the pros and cons based on its own principles and interests, rather than mechanically choosing to side with the US.