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With the Trump administration focused on the Middle East, China is continuing to expand its influence in Southeast Asia. One example, a new air base in Laos. Michael Sullivan reports from neighboring Thailand.
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MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: This cheerful video from China's Ministry of Defense last month shows stills of rows of Chinese and Lao military officials at the opening ceremony of the new joint training base in Ban Keun, just outside the capital Vientiane, at an airfield once used by the CIA's Air America during the Vietnam War. The new base's opening drew little attention until Reuters news agency satellite photos showed light attack aircraft and military vehicles on site. That got people's attention.
ALEXANDER VUVING: I think this is fairly significant.
SULLIVAN: Alexander Vuving is a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. He says while the new joint base doesn't by itself pose an immediate threat...
VUVING: It's another slice in the process of low-key and gradual expansion by China in the region.
SULLIVAN: Other analysts, though, are more skeptical.
HUNTER MARSTON: We shouldn't be too excited.
SULLIVAN: Hunter Marston directs the Southeast Asia Program at the Lowy Institute in Australia.
MARSTON: The runway appears from satellite imagery to be around 2,000 meters. It's not sufficient for long-range bombers or anything of heavy operational capacity like that. And at any rate, the Chinese already have a number of longer runways in the South China Sea and the artificial islands that they've constructed there.
SULLIVAN: And maybe that's why the response from the neighbors and Washington has been muted.
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SULLIVAN: Just last year, another opening ceremony in Cambodia got a lot more attention - that of the newly renovated Ream Naval Base, largely funded by China, with a jointly operated training center and a new deep-water pier and dry dock, some observers feared would allow China easy access to both the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea.
MARSTON: Ream Naval Base has not been the worst-case scenario that many China hawks expected.
SULLIVAN: In fact, Hunter Marston says it's hosted not just Chinese vessels, but warships from the U.S. and Japan as well, as Cambodia attempts to reduce its dependence on China. Laos, already broke and deeply in debt to China, may not have such agency should Beijing want more than just a joint training base in the future.
For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan in Chiang Rai. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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