Belt And Road Paving Way For China's Military Presence In SE Asia

Diplomats and analysts, meanwhile, will be watching for the introduction of air defenses, fuel and ammunition storage, and surveillance installations, any of which would suggest the base is meant for much more than training.

Laos may have little to no choice but to accommodate China's commands on the base and potentially others down the line. Chinese state-owned and private companies have financed, built and operate many of Laos' large hydropower dams, which contribute largely to the small nation's big power export ambitions.

Upstream, Chinese dams on the Mekong River have altered water flows into Laos and downstream into Thailand and Cambodia. Chinese firms also hold extensive Lao mining concessions, tapping into rich reserves of copper, gold and some rare earth metals. And Chinese capital has turned large stretches of the country into rubber, banana and timber plantations that serve mainly the Chinese market.

The United States and its Western allies have done little to counter China's spreading influence in Laos beyond working through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), hoping the bloc can counter Beijing's pull on Vientiane. ASEAN, however, operates on the twin cardinal principles of“non-interference” and“consensus”, meaning it is ill-suited to any geopolitical rebalancing task.

Cambodia is another version of the same Belt and Road Initiative playbook. China is Cambodia's largest investor and closest political partner, and years of Belt and Road financing for ports, roads, power plants and special economic zones have deepened Phnom Penh's economic reliance on Beijing. That dependence has had a military payoff, most visibly at the Ream Naval Base on the Gulf of Thailand.

Fears over China's presence at Ream first surfaced in 2019, when The Wall Street Journal reported that US officials had seen a draft agreement giving China 30-year use of the base, including the right to post personnel, store weapons and berth warships. Phnom Penh predictably denied it, noting that its constitution forbids foreign bases.

But China began helping to fund a revamp of the facility in 2022, soon after the demolition of a US-funded building on the site in 2020 amid a downturn in bilateral ties on democracy issues and suspended joint military exercises. Chinese warships have since docked there for months at a time.

Ream's renovation was completed in 2025 with a new pier able to take much larger ships and a dry dock for repairs. Prime Minister Hun Manet inaugurated the base on April 5 of that year, with a delegation from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) on hand, and said Cambodia had“nothing to hide.”

Within days, China and Cambodia held joint exercises at a China-Cambodia Joint Support and Training Center there. That name is strikingly similar to the one given to the new facility at Ban Keun in Laos, suggesting a Beijing-scripted template: a“joint” training and support center that gives China cover for and a permanent military foothold.

Cambodia insists Ream is open to all friendly nations, and in January 2026 the USS Cincinnati became the first US warship to dock at the upgraded base. But strategic analysts remain skeptical. Having paid for the expansion, they argue, China will continue to enjoy preferential access whatever the constitution says, and Phnom Penh's hedging looks more like a way to blunt Western criticism than real rebalancing.

The pattern is by now familiar: Beijing finances infrastructure in a Southeast Asian country, the host government denies any quid pro quo and a military presence quietly emerges in the name of joint training.

Myanmar is another ASEAN country where China has made considerable inroads. Beijing's security planners have long seen Myanmar as a link between China and South and Southeast Asia, and as the one country that can provide safe, relatively easy access to the Indian Ocean and beyond.

The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, part of the Belt and Road Initiative, includes an already built deep-sea port at Kyaukphyu on the Bay of Bengal and plans for highways and railways linking Myanmar's coast to China's southern Yunnan province, and is a vital link in China's push south.

For decades, the West condemned Myanmar's junta for human rights abuses but did little constructive to loosen China's ever-tightening grip on Myanmar. Instead, it was the generals themselves who took the initiative to mitigate Myanmar's dependence on Beijing.

According to Myanmar army documents seen by Asia Times, the generals viewed dependence on Beijing as a threat to national sovereignty and concluded that Myanmar needed better relations with the West to maintain sovereignty and independence.