On May 11, Senior Colonel Zhou Bo (ret.), a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy and a China Forum expert, gave an interview to The Japan Times on the South China Sea and Taiwan.

While attention has largely focused on the Taiwan Strait as the most likely place for US-China conflict, it is more likely to be triggered by an accident or miscalculation in the increasingly militarized South China Sea, with dangerously close encounters at sea and in the air on the rise, warned Zhou.

In the South China Sea, military dynamics of the Philippines and Japan warrant particular attention, said Zhou. The Philippines and the US agreed in February to ramp up their mutual defense treaty, with Manila agreeing to grant US forces access to four more military sites in the Philippines. If the Philippines were to give bases to the Americans for use during a cross-strait conflict, that would heat things up, warned Zhou. In addition, Japan, which has been bolstering defense and security ties with the Philippines, is considering a potential tripartite security pact with Washington and Manila, a move that would give the impression that Tokyo is trying to become a party to the South China Sea disputes. Tokyo is also planning to double its defense expenditure, but Taiwan is not another Ukraine, and Tokyo’s move to use Ukraine as a justification for a military buildup is misplaced, said Zhou.

Read the interview here: 

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/05/11/asia-pacific/zhou-bo-china-us-south-china-sea-conflict

Founded in 1897, The Japan Times is Japan’s oldest and most widely read English-language newspaper.