News | June 23, 2025

Chinese Military Diplomacy

By Phillip C. Saunders and Melodie Ha China Strategic Perspectives 19

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Excel file with data used in Chinese Military Diplomacy

China Perspectives 19Executive Summary

  • Chinese military diplomacy serves both strategic and operational goals. The main strategic goals are supporting Chinese foreign policy and shaping the strategic environment; operational goals include supporting People’s Liberation Army (PLA) modernization and collecting intelligence on foreign militaries.
  • Military diplomacy is a tool for building foreign relations and an indicator of the quality of China’s bilateral relationships. When relations are strained, military-diplomatic engagements decrease or stop; when relations are good, engagements tend to increase.
  • Military activities are limited by partner willingness and capability, Chinese domestic constraints, and Chinese Communist Party control over the PLA. PLA engagements with foreign militaries often emphasize form over substance and do not necessarily build much trust or interoperability with military partners.
  • The total number of PLA senior-level visits, exercises, and port calls grew significantly from 2002–08, stayed relatively constant from 2009–19, and dropped dramatically in the COVID-19 years of 2020–22 before gradually beginning to rise again starting in 2023. Senior-level visits are the most common form of activity, but military exercises and port calls make up an increasing share of PLA foreign military engagements.
  • Asia is the highest priority region for Chinese military diplomacy, with Europe in second place and Africa a distant third. Southeast Asia has emerged as a battleground for U.S.-China competition in military diplomacy.
  • Russia, Pakistan, and the United States are the PLA’s top three partners, but the volume of U.S.-China engagements has declined significantly from its peak in 2015, while engagements with Russia and Pakistan have continued apace.
  • Initially suspicious of multilateral forums, the PLA now participates in six annual multilateral security dialogues and hosts several other meetings in China. These forums provide a platform for Chinese messaging and an opportunity for regular bilateral meetings with Chinese partners.
  • As China’s diplomatic weight has grown, more countries are willing to send their senior officials to China without reciprocal visits. This highlights the increasing willingness of other countries to engage on Chinese terms. China has also followed U.S. practice and initiated new “2+2” foreign ministry/defense ministry dialogues with South Korea, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
  • Multilateral exercises sponsored by organizations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) make up a modest but increasing proportion of PLA exercises. The PLA has also increased exercises with Southeast Asian militaries in recent years, including with countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines that have territorial disputes with China.
  • Military exercises play a symbolic role in demonstrating friendly political relations. Most PLA exercises involve nontraditional security issues such as humanitarian assistance and antiterrorism, but exercises with Russia, Pakistan, and the SCO are more focused on combat-relevant skills. China and Russia also started to conduct operationally focused joint air and naval patrols in 2019.
  • The COVID-19 pandemic had a significantly negative impact on PLA military diplomacy. Port calls stopped entirely from March 2020 to November 2022, and senior-level meetings were mostly conducted by video teleconference or phone call, with little travel by senior PLA leaders. Military engagements decreased by 75 percent, but the PLA became more active in delivering COVID-19 medical supplies, personal protective equipment, and medical expertise to countries in South and Southeast Asia. Activity began to recover in 2023, but has not returned to pre-COVID-19 levels.
  • Purges of senior PLA leaders have become an obstacle to the PLA’s ability to maintain consistent relations with foreign counterparts.
  • The volume of PLA engagements does not necessarily equate to influence. U.S. allies and partners, especially in Southeast Asia, use military diplomacy as a means of managing their broader relationships with China and sometimes engage with the PLA to balance more substantive security cooperation with the United States. Close U.S. allies such as South Korea and Australia have seen a decrease in engagements with the PLA as U.S.- China security tensions have deepened.
  • U.S. policy should focus on limiting the PLA’s ability to use military diplomacy to improve its operational capabilities or to build strategic relationships that give it access to ports and bases. The United States should not dissuade U.S. allies and partners from engaging the PLA as part of their China policy but should insist that friendly militaries not teach the PLA tactics, techniques, and procedures they have learned from the United States and be cautious when engaging the PLA in exercises.