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 the 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 the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University and a China Forum expert.

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

Zhou Bo is a 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 at the Land Warfare Studies Centre of the Australian Army in 1999. He has attended various courses at Harvard University, Westminster University, PLA National Defense University, PLA University of Science and Technology for the National Defense, and PLA Army Command College (Shijiazhuang).