In recent years it has become clear that the Milky Way is an important testing ground for theories of galaxy formation. Much of this growth has been driven by large surveys, both photometric and spectroscopic, which are producing vast and rich catalogs of data. Through the analysis of these data sets we can gain new and detailed insights into the physical processes which shaped the Milky Way's evolution. This review will discuss a number of these developments, first focusing on the disk of the Milky Way, and then looking at its satellite population. The importance of surveys has not gone unnoticed by the Chinese astronomy community and in the final section we discuss a number of Chinese projects that are set to play a key role in the development of this field.