Rupert Schulenburg
The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) participation in joint bilateral and multilateral military exercises with partner militaries has steadily increased in number over the last decade. This article defines ‘joint exercises’ as Chinese bilateral or multilateral military exercises with international partner militaries, rather than using ‘joint’ to denote integration or jointness between these militaries.
In 2015, the year Chinese President Xi Jinping announced large-scale military reforms, the PLA participated in a total of 19 joint exercises with partner militaries, compared to 36 in 2023 and 34 in 2024. Various diplomatic, political and military objectives have driven this growth. These objectives include improving the PLA’s image as a ‘world-class military’ (世界一流军队) as well as its overseas operational experience and inter-operability with select foreign militaries. Joint exercises, especially those conducted alongside partners belonging to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, also advance China’s bilateral and multilateral relationships. Underlining these numbers, however, are several inter-service dynamics that reveal the different roles and priorities held by the PLA Army (PLAA), Navy (PLAN) and Air Force (PLAAF) towards joint exercises.
Inter-service dynamics
Examination of bilateral and multilateral joint-exercise data from 2015 to September 2025 demonstrates the PLA’s sustained interest in growing and diversifying its exercise profile. 2016 saw the largest annual increase of this period (discounting for anomalies because of the COVID-19 pandemic), when the number of joint exercises in which the PLA participated grew by 58% to 30. After an expected reduction during the pandemic, the number of joint exercises involving the PLA rebounded to 36 in 2023 and 34 in 2024. This recent increase has come through participation in bilateral rather than multilateral joint exercises. Between 2022 and 2024, the average annual growth rate in the number of bilateral joint exercises was 80%. In comparison, the number of multilateral joint exercises reduced from 13 to four between 2023 and 2024 (compared to 30 bilateral joint exercises in 2024).
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