Laotian Defence Minister Khamlieng Outhakayson attended the official opening ceremony for the China-Laos Joint Support and Training Center on 29 September 2026, the day China disclosed the facility at Ban Keun Airport in Laos.
The China-Laos Friendship Aviation Academy also officially began operating that day. China’s Ministry of National Defense identified the site as the China-Laos Joint Support and Training Center.
The airfield is approximately 50 kilometers north of Vientiane. It lies at 18.36043°N 102.56424°E, in the centre of the Indochinese peninsula and approximately 50 kilometers from the Thai border in Nong Khai province. The site is due west of Vietnam and no more than 800 kilometers from the borders of Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Its facilities include a 2,000-meter-long paved runway, a taxiway, a parking apron, an air traffic control tower and five hangars at the northern end of the airfield. The location gives the People’s Liberation Army a foothold some 400 kilometers farther south into the Indochina Peninsula than China’s existing southwestern border.
Official statements said the centre’s main purpose is to develop pilot skills in the Laos air force. It includes equipment support, simulation programmes and training equipment intended to improve Laos’s aviation support capability. The establishment was conducted on “equal footing under consultation and discussion”.
The September announcement followed a June meeting in Beijing between Chairman Xi Jinping and Lao President Thongloun Sisoulith. Construction of the Laos base appeared to begin late in the previous year. Satellite imagery recorded China’s conversion of a green area in Laos into new military facilities over the past year.
The airfield had previously housed Lima Site 44, within a network of airbases built by the US military and the CIA during the Vietnam War.
China established its first overseas military base in Djibouti at the Gulf of Aden in 2017. It then established a China-Cambodia support and training centre at Ream Port in Cambodia in 2025. China now has access to two bases in Southeast Asia, a naval facility in Cambodia and the new air base in Laos.
Scholars have described the Laos facility as China’s “first complete overseas military base in Southeast Asia.” They said it resembles China’s military logistics base in Djibouti. The Laos facility is China’s third military support base in a foreign country.
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