NEW TAIPEI CITY, Taiwan — China’s design to use a Laotian airport for joint military training has put much of Southeast Asia on guard about how far the People’s Liberation Army will extend its reach.
The China-Laos Joint Support and Training Center at Ban Keun Airport some 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the Lao capital Vientiane and the China-Laos Friendship Aviation Academy kicked off in September, the Chinese Ministry of Defense said on its website.
China’s role at the military airport, which had just finished major upgrades and features a 2,000-meter runway, suggests that the People’s Liberation Army intends to springboard into other parts of Southeast Asia – a land-border neighbor where several countries have territorial differences with China – experts say.
“As China in reality aspires to be a major power, it has to gradually and in a low-key manner build up military bases, albeit for training or other seemingly innocuous purposes,” said Oh Ei Sun, principal adviser at the Pacific Research Center think tank in Kuala Lumpur.
“Laos has long been considered to be a close ally for (China) in Southeast Asia and it is of course no surprise that China’s first base in Southeast Asia is located there,” he added.
The two countries share a border, a Communist Party leadership and a recent history of economic cooperation led by large Chinese infrastructure projects such as a railway line.
The defense ministry in Beijing said the training center, to be jointly maintained and operated, is aimed at helping Laos strengthen the training of its air force pilots.
Ban Keun will allow a “continuous” Chinese presence and primarily be used to “steer procurement to Chinese equipment” and support PLA air operations, the China Global South Project media platform says in a study.
The ministry website says China’s role at the airport is “not directed against any third party”, contributing instead to improving “practical military cooperation.”
But instead, China may be increasing its military foothold “deep inside mainland Southeast Asia” after earlier establishing a naval presence at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, said Nguyen Thanh Trung, a political scientist at Fulbright University in Vietnam. Mainland Southeast Asia includes Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand as well as Laos and Cambodia.
Chinese operational military presence and privileged access at the Cambodian base grew from 2019 through 2025, Asian mainstream media reports have said.
China is keen on Laos now “because the Chinese feel it’s time to complement the naval facility in Cambodia with nearby air power capability,” said Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Centre think tank in Hawaii.
Using both its navy and air force, Beijing has shored up its South China Sea claims over the past two decades by building artificial islands, often for military use. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam dispute parts of the sea with China.
Sporadic China-Vietnam incidents have occurred in the waters since the 1970s. China and the Philippines are jousting for control over tiny islets west of Luzon and Palawan islands.
“Vietnam is probably the most sensitive, as Laos has long been its strategic buffer, and for now the foothold looks more like China asserting leverage over Hanoi and Phnom Penh,” said Hangyu Lee, East Asia Pacific analyst at the nonprofit organization Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. He said Ban Keun and Ream “together could look like a wider Chinese security network.”
Myanmar, Lee added, could be “indirectly affected” if the airport improves China’s ability to monitor activity across continental Southeast Asia. Myanmar, with its own Chinese border, has been in civil war since 2021.
China’s presence at the Laotian airport has been linked to its first confirmed overseas base, in the East African country Djibouti. The People’s Liberation Army uses it as a support base. The African base and now Ban Keun mark China’s gradual, low-key buildup of bases, Oh said.
But the Laotian site “represents a new air-centered model” distinct from Djibouti and Ream in Cambodia, the China Global South Project study says.
“Eventually it can be a pre-positioned base for PRC aircraft as needed,” Roy said. “It could also be expanded to accommodate more and larger aircraft.”
