Zhou Bo, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Strategy and Security at Tsinghua University, said U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sees China as a "pacing threat" and therefore maintains a "laser-like focus" on China, while Russia is the immediate adversary. Regarding potential conflicts in space, he noted that it was China and Russia who first proposed a joint draft on preventing the deployment of weapons in space in 2008 and renewed it in 2014, while the U.S. vetoed it.