Laos, explained.
Ban Keun Airport, roughly 50 kilometres north of Vientiane, image taken by satellite on 1 October 2026 (Planet Labs PBC)
A modest training centre on paper, but any upgrade would alarm capitals well beyond Southeast Asia.
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What to make of China’s new air facility in Laos What to make of China’s new air facility in Laos
An announcement (Opens in new window) of a new Chinese-funded military facility in Laos to train local air force pilots has raised questions about whether it will function as a de facto Chinese military base, and how it will extend Beijing’s power projection across the region.
The Joint Support and Training Centre and China-Laos Friendship Aviation Academy is located at Ban Keun Airport, roughly 50 kilometres north of Vientiane. China’s Ministry of Defence emphasised that the new facility will be used to train Laos Air Force pilots, enhance “practical military cooperation,” and promote “regional peace and stability”. The Chinese official statement added that the training centre “is not directed against any third party”.
According to satellite imagery analysis the runway is about 2,000 metres (Opens in new window) long, sufficient to land most People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighter jets, including the J-10 and J-11, as well as Y-20B transport aircraft, but too short to support long-range PLA bombers, which require closer to 3,000 metres, as my Lowy Institute colleague David Vallance points out (Opens in new window).
The same airfield was previously known as Lima Site 44 when the United States military and Central Intelligence Agency used the same site (Opens in new window) during the Vietnam War. At the time, the CIA primarily used crude airstrips, as it was then, for resupply and to transport ground forces.
Vietnam already fears encirclement as China fortifies artificial islands and bases in the South China Sea.
However, it is unclear how China would seek to use the airbase in peacetime. Rudy Lu from China Global South Project suggests (Opens in new window) that the site could support PLA air force operations such as joint military exercises with Thailand by allowing it to preposition aircraft in neighbouring Laos, thus shortening the travel distance.
It is also unclear why the two sides selected this particular site or indeed why China chose to open a training centre in Laos – as opposed to Cambodia, where Beijing financed the construction upgrade of Ream Naval Base (Opens in new window) on the Gulf of Thailand several years back.
Several commentators (Opens in new window) have already drawn parallels (Opens in new window) between Ban Keun and Ream, suggesting that together the two facilities will allow the Chinese military to project force over both inland and maritime domains. However, other analysts (Opens in new window) stress that the two are fundamentally different, given Ream’s naval focus, and contend that the new air site in Laos represents a novel addition (Opens in new window) for China’s overseas military operations.
According to one analyst cited by Lu, Laos may have been a more appealing partner for this project given Cambodia’s recent diplomacy. The Hun Manet government in Phnom Penh recently restored (Opens in new window) military exercises with the United States, and Cambodia has allowed (Opens in new window) the US Navy to dock its vessels at Ream.
It is unclear how China would seek to use the airbase in peacetime (Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images)
Laos has become dependent on China, which provided roughly two-thirds (Opens in new window) of Laos’ foreign direct investment in 2024 and owns the largest share of the country’s debt. The ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party has also enhanced political and security cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party in recent years. When President Thongloun Sisoulith visited Beijing in June, the two sides pledged (Opens in new window) to expand defence ties, and China’s Xi Jinping proposed the establishment of an annual “3+3” dialogue, signalling the priority that the Chinese Communist Party places on bilateral ties.
Viewed in this context, the new Ban Keun joint air training centre is a reflection of the two sides’ deepening alignment. China’s burgeoning influence in Laos has not gone unnoticed in neighbouring Vietnam, Laos’ principal security partner dating back to the two countries’ shared struggle for independence in the 1960s and 1970s.
Vietnam already fears encirclement as China fortifies artificial islands and bases in the South China Sea. With a new military facility in Laos in addition to Ream naval base in Cambodia, Beijing has effectively pulled off an end run around Hanoi’s air and maritime flanks. No other country in the region is as directly exposed as Vietnam.
Ultimately, long-term impact of Ban Keun depends on how the PLA uses the new facility, whether Beijing seeks to use Vientiane’s dependence to acquire an exclusive base, and what upgrades may follow – including lengthening the runway to allow the PLA to land long-range bombers such as the H-6. Any of those changes would draw greater scrutiny from beyond Southeast Asia and sharpen threat perceptions in Canberra and Washington.
About the author
Hunter Marston
Dr Hunter Marston is the Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Lowy Institute and Project Lead for the Asia Power Index.
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