China Gets a New Base in Southeast Asia

China's overseas basing

Peter Zion (Speaker 1): 00:00 Hey everybody, Peter Zion here, coming to you from Colorado. It's a nice fall day. I figured I'd get out and stretch the legs.

Today we're going to talk about a new development in Southeast Asia. It appears—I don't want to overplay it—but it appears that the Chinese are laying the foundations for their first overseas base that they can actually supply without outside help.

Keep in mind that they only have one until now, and that one is in Djibouti. It's part of the whole anti-pirate operation, but that is completely dependent upon countries like Vietnam and India allowing their navy to operate unfettered, and the United States even facilitating, actively, Chinese supply lines.

Laos and its regional position

00:42 They can't project power that far. The new one is in Laos, the country in Southeast Asia. It's landlocked. It is—let's be kind—it's a failed state, and the only reason that it even gets talked about at all is because Chinese investment basically controls it.

Chinese security forces basically run the intelligence services. It is not an independent power in any stretch of the imagination. It's much more under the Chinese thumb than, say, Belarus is under Russia's thumb, for example.

Anyway, it's landlocked. It's got Vietnam on one side, Thailand to the south, and Myanmar to the west. And so what it really has is strategic position among countries that really matter now and will really matter in the future. Because if you look forward 10, 20, 30 years, these three countries—Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos—have a combination of industrial capacity and geographic potential, and, for the most part, a good demographic structure. So they're going to be major industrial powers moving forward.

Anyway, the new base is just south of—

The proposed base and China's reach

01:45 Vientiane, which is the capital of Laos, and it's basically hard up, spitting distance of the Thai border. And with the airbase, it seems to be under construction. Satellite photos have shown a number of Chinese aircraft that have been there, and not just overnight, so it's not an exercise.

The Chinese would be able to project power really throughout land-based Southeast Asia, which is something that could be a problem for anyone in the area.

Pros and cons from the Chinese point of view. Pros, of course, is the new reach that they have, and turning a client state into a military satrapy. Not a bad idea.

Thailand: capabilities and independence

02:21 Cons: the country that this is on the border of is Thailand. And Thailand is arguably the most capable country in the region from an economic and from a security point of view. So if you put an airbase hard on the border of a country that actually has a functional army, if you ever use that airbase, you're going to be hating life in the not-too-distant future.

Also keep in mind that Thailand is not a normal country in many respects. It's not that it's pro-American—although, as a rule, it is—it's that Thailand has a deep cultural muscle tone that isn't just part of the post-World War II era.

Even at the height of the age of empires, in the colonial age, Thailand was never fully colonized. The core of it, including right up to the border that this base is now on, always remained under domestic Thai control.

So if the Chinese were looking to pick a fight with someone who can fight back, they picked well. And if they're looking to undermine a country, this is the one they have to undermine. So one way or another, this is really colorful. And I don't think we're going to have to wait more than a couple of years to see how Thailand and other countries respond. That's it.