China watchFrom Visits to Vaccines: The Evolving Nature of China’s Military Diplomacy

A new report by Meia Nouwens of the International Institute of Strategic Studies details the Chinese military’s place in China’s COVID-19-related foreign policy. The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) military-to-military cooperation in response to the global coronavirus pandemic signals a growing role for the military within China’s diplomatic activities.

Historically, the PLA played a minor role in Chinese foreign policy. Nouwens argues, however, that following the adoption by China of a more nationalist and assertive foreign policy, the PLA’s role in national diplomacy and security strategy has grown to serve both strategic and operational goals, and that it has reached new heights in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.

Military-to-military COVID-19-related engagement has taken place within a larger context of Beijing’s expanded diplomatic efforts to improve China’s global reputation following its initial delayed and mishandled response at the start of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020. Pandora Report notes that publicly available data shows that COVID-19 military diplomacy began in March 2020, when the PLA sent protective equipment and clothing to Iran. In February 2021, the PLA began to donate COVID-19 vaccines to overseas militaries. The PLA’s vaccine assistance to 13 countries globally fits within a wider vaccine-centric diplomatic effort by the Chinese government but so far has been far smaller in scale. Geographically, the PLA mostly engaged with countries in the Asia–Pacific and Africa.

Nouwens says that the PLA’s activities were usually framed within the ‘responsible stakeholder’ narrative that China sought to promote through its civilian aid diplomacy. It is likely that the PLA sought to cooperate with militaries wherever it could and focused on countries with which it already enjoyed established friendly relations, rather than using the PLA’s military diplomacy to establish new strategic relations. The PLA’s military diplomatic activities relating to the coronavirus demonstrate that the PLA will increasingly play a greater role in China’s foreign diplomacy, in line with President Xi’s instructions.