The National Defense University (NDU) recently released a major update to its comprehensive, publicly available database tracking the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) international military-diplomatic engagements from 2002 to 2024. The NDU PLA Military Diplomacy Database systematically captures and categorizes key details of China’s interactions with foreign military counterparts. Each entry represents a specific engagement—a high-level visit, combined exercise, or naval port call—with accompanying metadata on the activity’s category, date, region, participants, and more. Open-source data makes complete coverage of all PLA engagements in these categories possible; the distribution of engagements across countries and regions therefore reflects Chinese priorities for military-to-military engagements.
Drawing on this dataset, NDU’s Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) published a detailed monograph in China Strategic Perspectives 19, titled China's Military Diplomacy, alongside a shorter companion piece in The Diplomat. Together, these publications focus on the strategic level and highlight a clear trend: the PLA has expanded its military diplomacy over the last two decades to advance China's strategic objectives (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: PLA Military Diplomacy Over Time (2002–2024)
Strategically, military diplomacy serves Beijing’s broader foreign policy goal of shaping a favorable international environment. Operationally, it supports PLA modernization and enables intelligence collection on foreign militaries. The intensity of military engagement often mirrors the broader bilateral relationship—when ties are strong, engagements increase; when relations deteriorate, activity tends to decline. That said, many PLA engagements are more symbolic than substantive, often falling short of building real interoperability or lasting trust with foreign forces.
The updated NDU dataset allows for a detailed exploration of the PLA’s military diplomacy—who China engages with, how often, and in what form. This short paper illustrates several practical applications of the dataset and highlights opportunities for analysis.
Top Partners
Figure 2: Top 10 PLA Military Diplomacy Partner Nations (2002–2024)
Figure 2 shows the PLA’s most frequent military diplomatic counterparts between 2002–2024. Unsurprisingly, Russia leads in combined military exercises (59), reflecting an institutionalized China-Russia defense relationship. Pakistan follows with 48 exercises and 85 visits. Despite rising tensions, the United States remains the top partner in senior-level PLA visits (114), likely due to high levels of engagement prior to 2017 and a continued emphasis on military-to-military communication as a crisis management tool between the world’s two most capable militaries. Southeast Asian countries—including Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam—also rank highly, underscoring the region’s strategic relevance to Beijing.
Comparing Russia and the U.S.
The dataset’s granularity allows for side-by-side comparisons of PLA engagement with specific countries. The most intuitive example is a comparison between China’s military diplomacy with Russia and the United States.
Figure 3: PLA Military Diplomacy with Russia and the U.S. Over Time
Figure 3 charts total PLA military engagements—senior-level visits, port calls, and combined exercises—with both countries. The trends are visually clear: engagement with Russia has steadily increased, while engagement with the U.S. has declined. This aligns with the broader trajectory of China’s deepening partnership with Russia and its deteriorating relationship with the United States. However, the U.S. case reflects the priority Washington has placed on military-to-miliary communication as a crisis-avoidance mechanism.
Regional Trends
The database also allows analysts to examine PLA military diplomacy by region. It codes three types of regional differentiation: (1) Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs categories, (2) U.S. Combatant Command Area of Responsibility, and (3) standard geographic regions. This allows analysts to look at PLA military diplomacy through the lens of the PLA, the U.S. military, or traditional geographic boundaries.
Figure 4: PLA Military Diplomacy by Chinese MFA Categorizations
Figure 4 illustrates PLA engagement across the MFA’s four global regions: West Asia and Africa, Europe and Central Asia, Asia, and America and Oceania. Asia accounts for the highest number of military exercises (187) and a substantial share of port calls (146), reflecting China’s emphasis on regional presence and cooperation. Europe and Central Asia rank highest in senior-level diplomacy (805), likely driven by sustained engagement with Russia and other Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members. Finally, West Asia and Africa show high naval activity (172 port calls) despite relatively modest numbers of military exercises and senior-level visits. This is likely due to China’s interests in maritime trade routes, anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, and its expanding presence in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. This trend also reflects the PLA’s more frequent logistics sustainment port calls prior to establishment of its overseas logistics base in Djibouti in 2017.
Engagement with U.S. Allies
The dataset can also help track PLA engagement with a specific group of countries. For example, Figure 5 focuses on PLA engagement with U.S. treaty allies: other NATO members, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, and New Zealand.
Figure 5: PLA Military Diplomacy with U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty Allies (2002-2024)
Engagement with these allies increased steadily until 2017—especially in the form of combined exercises and port calls—before dropping sharply under the first Trump administration and remaining low in the post-COVID period. This decline likely reflects both rising U.S.-China competition and growing caution among U.S. allies, potentially compounded by U.S. diplomatic pressure to reduce engagement with the PLA.
Engagement with NATO countries (other than the United States) has declined even more markedly (see Figure 6), suggesting mounting European skepticism of China’s strategic intentions in parallel with greater transatlantic alignment on China policy.
Figure 6: PLA Military Diplomacy with Non-U.S. NATO Countries (2002-2024)
Seasonal Rhythms
One of the strengths of the NDU dataset is its granularity. Each entry documents a specific engagement, including date, activity type, and source. Figure 7 depicts monthly patterns in PLA activity across the three main engagement types.
Figure 7: PLA Military Diplomacy by Month
According to the database, senior-level visits tend to peak in the spring and fall—particularly in May, September, October, and November—likely aligning with international conference schedules such as the Shangri-la Dialogue in May or June and the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+) in November. Military exercises are concentrated in late summer and early fall, consistent with favorable weather and the timing of multilateral drills in which China regularly participates – e.g., those under the SCO framework. Naval port calls are more evenly distributed throughout the year. Overall, winter months tend to see reduced activity. The PLA works with foreign partners to plan the next year’s activities in December and January; this (combined with the Chinese spring festival holiday) helps explain the low level of activities in January and February.
Further Applications
The updated NDU dataset offers a valuable tool for researchers, analysts, and policymakers to visualize and better understand the PLA’s global military outreach. While the NDU monograph demonstrates the data’s utility at the strategic level, this paper has highlighted its potential for more granular analysis, supporting analysis at the regional and country level and revealing temporal trends and patterns across specific actor groups. The possibilities for future research are far from exhausted. A forthcoming Strategic Insights will apply the dataset to Chinese military diplomacy in Africa, offering a regional case study of evolving engagement patterns.
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The views and opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States government, Department of Defense, or the National Defense University. The authors thank Dr. Joel Wuthnow and Dr. Andrew Taffer for comments on an earlier draft.