ExclusiveMichael Pillsbury, new chairman of Pentagon’s policy board, aims to bridge gap in understanding about China

The long-time China hawk Michael Pillsbury, newly appointed as chairman of the US Department of Defence policy advisory board, will use his tenure to address what he considers to be the Pentagon’s lack of understanding about Chinese military intentions.

Announced by defence officials on Wednesday, the appointment of Pillsbury to head the Defence Policy Board came two weeks after a purge of the panel by the Trump administration. Among those terminated were former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, two long-standing advocates of engagement with Beijing.

Pillsbury, best known for his book The Hundred-Year Marathon, which contended that Beijing was pursuing a secret, century-long plot to usurp the US as the world’s pre-eminent superpower, has served as an outside adviser to US President Donald Trump, who has called him the “leading authority on China”.

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Pillsbury said he understood from the Trump administration that officials were concerned about a perceived “lack of expertise on China” on the board, prompting his appointment.

“To deter another country, you have to know quite a bit about how it thinks, lest there be misperceptions and misunderstandings,” said Pillsbury, citing US efforts to counter China’s growing military presence in the Pacific.

Among a “whole range of research projects” that the board would undertake, Pillsbury, 75, anticipated that one focus would be how to avoid accidental conflict with China.

Even amid a coordinated effort by the Trump administration to infuse a hawkish China strategy across multiple agencies, Pillsbury said: “I think we are in the beginning phases of understanding.”