This paper illustrates additional applications of National Defense University’s (NDU) Chinese Military Diplomacy Database. In June, a NDU monograph introduced the updated 5.0 version of the database and demonstrated its utility for strategic analysis. A subsequent Strategic Insights article highlighted the potential for more granular analysis at the regional and country level and focused on trends over time. This article shows another application for regional researchers, analysts, and policymakers. Specifically, it uses the database to explore some specific aspects of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) evolving engagement in Africa.

Senior-level visits as signals of support

While the database tracks three distinct types of military diplomatic activities (Senior Leader Visits, Military Exercises, and Port Calls), this section focuses on PLA meetings with African military leaders. As detailed in the database codebook, Senior Level Visits are meetings with high-level foreign military leaders, either abroad, hosted in China, or virtual (by phone or video). The database tracks details of each meeting, including the rank and position of the Chinese military leader conducting the visit, whether the meeting was a bilateral or multilateral engagement, and, when possible, the name and position of the partner nation counterpart. Database searches can be tailored to offer unique insights and reinforce the idea that the time of senior PLA leaders is a scarce resource that must be allocated wisely.

For example, Figure 1 shows that since 2002, China’s military leaders have engaged with military leaders from nearly every country in Africa. While there is variation in the number of engagements the PLA has conducted with each state, refinement to the search provides an improved understanding of the PLA’s strategic priorities in Africa. If one focuses on the overseas visits by the most senior PLA officers (the Vice Chairs of the Central Military Commission (CMC)), the result is revealing (see Figure 2). CMC Vice Chairs are the most senior officers in the PLA and are typically only allowed to make one international trip per year. (General Cao Gangchuan held dual positions as a CMC Vice-Chair and as Defense Minister from 2003-2007; subsequent Defense Ministers have not also held the CMC Vice-Chair position.) Given their infrequent overseas travel, a visit by a CMC Vice-Chair is a strong signal of the importance the PLA places on its relationship with a country.

Figure 1: All Military Leader Engagements with Africa.  Figure 2: CMC Vice Chair travel to Africa.

Since 2002 a CMC Vice Chair has only traveled to Africa on nine occasions, with Tanzania the only country to host two separate visits. Where the Vice Chairs have visited defies traditional strategic logic. A few countries are important economic partners, such as South Africa (a leading Chinese trade partner and BRICS member) and Sudan, which previously was a major supplier of oil to China. Other countries, such as Mozambique and Tanzania, are less economically important but have long-standing historical relations with China, particularly during the Cold War. It is surprising that there has not been a CMC Vice-Chair visit to Nigeria, an important regional power and Chinese trade partner, or to Algeria, a historical partner and the largest recipient of Chinese arms and equipment in the region. Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, all had more than ten interactions with Chinese military leaders but did not host a visit by the most senior PLA leaders, the strongest signal of Chinese commitment to a military relationship. The database cannot directly answer why these countries did (or did not) receive visits by the most senior PLA leaders, but it helps identify important data and frame questions for further analysis.

Military diplomacy to achieve strategic ends

This database can also contribute to understanding how China’s military diplomacy is used to achieve specific strategic objectives. As the PLA has improved its power projection capabilities, its overseas presence has also expanded. One concern about China’s presence in Africa involves the establishment of the PLA’s first overseas military base in the East African county of Djibouti. Mentioned in several annual DOD reports to Congress, the United States is concerned that China will increase its overseas basing beyond Djibouti, such as China’s recent presence at the Ream Naval Base in Cambodia. Exploring the role of China’s military leader engagement with Djibouti could identify how Beijing employs military leaders to achieve the strategic objective of establishing an overseas base. Figure 3 shows several high-level military leader engagements with Djibouti in the years preceding the establishment of the PLA base in 2017.

Figure 3: PLA Engagement with Djibouti, 2008 - 2022.

Interestingly, there was a complete cessation of senior military leader visits once the base was formally opened. Figure 3 also shows the frequency of PLA Navy port calls to Djibouti during this period. As shown, Djibouti was a frequent port of call before and immediately after the opening of the PLA base, especially for supporting the PLA Navy counterpiracy task forces. Once the PLA Navy logistics base was fully up and running, PLA Navy port calls to commercial ports in Djibouti ceased. These measures could offer insights and demonstrate how PLA leader engagement and port visits may be potential leading indicators of possible future basing negotiations.

The database shows that CMC Vice-Chairs were directly involved in the diplomacy to help secure PLA access to bases in Djibouti and Cambodia. General Fan Changlong visited Djibouti in November 2016 and hosted the Djiboutian Defense Minister and Chief of General Staff in Beijing in October and December 2016. CMC Vice-Chair He Weidong made three trips to Cambodia in 2023 and 2024 to help secure PLA Navy access to Ream naval base in Cambodia. The 2024 DOD Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China lists twenty other countries that the PLA has likely considered for future bases. CMC Vice Chairs have visited four of them since 2018: Pakistan (in 2018 and 2019), Angola (in 2019), Mozambique (in 2019), and Cuba (in 2024). CMC Vice-Chair visits are not a definitive indicator of Chinese base negotiations, but provide a useful piece of evidence to be considered alongside other information.

What Military Diplomacy can tell us about CCP Foreign Policy Priorities

Because the database covers over 20 years of China’s military diplomacy, it can provide insight into changes in China’s foreign policy priorities. The temporal variation of China’s senior leader engagements with Africa is just one example. Figure 4 shows that military senior level visits with Africa were more frequent under Hu Jintao but declined once Xi Jinping came to power in November 2012. This decline is evident in total Senior Leader Visits to Africa as well as Africa’s percentage of the PLA’s global engagements (see Figure 4). This trend can lead to several observations. One possibility is that Xi has enforced stricter control of military engagements, which could be due to the PLA anti-corruption campaign and an increased emphasis on military training and defense reform in the Xi era. Another is that Africa as a region may have become a lower priority for military leader engagement under Xi Jinping. Overseas travel by Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping supports the latter interpretation. Hu traveled to eighteen African countries in his ten years in office; Xi has made eleven visits to eight different African countries, including three visits to South Africa for BRICS summits. These are just two empirical insights from the database that can be investigated more deeply through other sources.

Figure 4: PLA Senior Leader Engagements with Africa, 2002-2024.

The rise of multilateral engagement

The database also reveals China’s increasing preference for engaging foreign militaries in multilateral venues. Figure 5 shows that although the rise of multilateral engagement with Africa is recent, it matches the PLA’s global trend. China has founded several new regional forums, such as the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which occurs every three years, along with others devoted to the Middle East and Latin America. The China-Africa Peace and Security Forum is a defense forum under the FOCAC umbrella. However, China’s most popular multilateral forum for engaging defense partners is the annual Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, whereas the China-Africa Peace and Security Forum occurs every three years. We should expect the PLA to continue to make use of multilateral forums to engage African militaries.

Figure 5: China’s increased use of multilateral forums to engage partners.

(Figure 5 does not include virtual engagements, such as the 2021 virtual China-Africa Peace and Security Forum during the COVID-19 pandemic.)

Further Applications

This article shows how NDU’s China Military Diplomacy Database can support granular analysis at the regional and country level. The database serves as a useful tool for analysts and policymakers to understand how the PLA engages with the world, a region, or a specific state. INSS intends to update the database annually so that it can continue to serve as a useful analytic tool. This article and this database update come at an important moment of U.S.-China strategic competition and show that the usefulness of the data is only limited by one’s imagination.