Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: China opens a new military base in Laos; a rumor that Trump will attend the next ASEAN summit spreads; and the hairy rhinos of Sumatra are expecting babies.
What Does China’s New Military Base in Laos Mean?
China has established a military base in Laos. It is its third overseas military base and its second in Southeast Asia; the other two are in Cambodia and Djibouti.
The China-Laos Joint Support and Training Center and the China-Laos Friendship Aviation Academy are situated at an airport about 30 miles from Laos’s capital, Vientiane, according to an announcement last week from Beijing’s Defense Ministry.
Satellite imagery shows that work started last year, according to Reuters. This will be China’s first overseas air force base.
The ministry said that the facilities exist to help Laos train its air force pilots. Data on the Lao People’s Liberation Army Air Force is sketchy, but open-source intelligence firm Janes reckons that it operates five SAIC LE500 basic trainers and four Yakovlev Yak-130UTS advanced jet trainers.
China’s global military presence is dwarfed by that of the United States. But in 2017, it opened its first acknowledged overseas military base, a logistics base in Djibouti, where it has a permanent presence.
In 2025, it opened a joint training and support center at Ream Naval Base in Cambodia, located on the Gulf of Thailand. However, Cambodia has insisted that there are no permanently stationed Chinese personnel or warships based there. And vessels from other navies, including the U.S. Navy, have visited Ream.
If China now develops a meaningful presence in Laos, what does this change?
China-focused military commentator Rudy Lu suggested that the base would allow China to shape Laos’s air force and encourage Laos to purchase Chinese equipment. The base could also be used in annual joint aviation drills with Thailand. The commentator quoted a Chinese military analysis account that said this would make the training “closer to actual combat.” Last and not least, the account said the base could let China “exert influence in the Indochina Peninsula in the future.”
Vietnam will likely be most concerned, as it has long viewed Indochina as its backyard, not China’s. In 1978, it invaded Cambodia to topple the pro-China Khmer Rouge government. When China then invaded Vietnam in 1979, Laos vocally backed Vietnam.
Now, though, China has—at the least—a peripatetic presence in both countries, in addition to its growing bases in the South China Sea. In a crisis, this could give China serious leverage over Vietnam, Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, told Bloomberg.
Taiwan is also concerned. In the event of conflict over the South China Sea or Taiwan, the base could help China intercept U.S. Air Force assets flying across Indochina from their Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean, said Su Tzu-yun, a defense expert at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, in an interview with the Taipei Times.
However, a number of experts have suggested that the base might not add much to the power projection capabilities already provided by military bases in southern China.
The only government to comment thus far has been Thailand. It is a U.S. treaty ally and has a long border with Laos, but it also cultivates warm ties with its neighbor and with China.
A Thai Defense Ministry spokesperson told Reuters that Thailand is a close partner of both Laos and China and that the former had a sovereign right to decide to host a Chinese base.
“Nevertheless, Thailand will continue to closely monitor developments and how the matter proceeds, particularly with regard to building mutual trust,” he added.
Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow, who visited Laos just before the opening of the base was announced, told media that the United States had warned Thailand in advance, but that Thailand could not interfere. He had not raised the issue with Laos during his visit but said he would at a later date.
Sihasak also said that the growing involvement of superpowers in the region made Thailand more important, as Bangkok “does not choose sides.”
Myanmar nationals deported. Myanmar Navy vessels carrying 1,476 Myanmar nationals deported from Malaysia docked at Thanlyin port, near Yangon, on Sunday.
Footage from AFP showed the returnees wearing shirts emblazoned, in English, with the phrases “I [heart] Myanmar” and “Happy Voyage Back to Motherland.”
The returnees were the first batch of the 5,000 migrants that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said that Myanmar has agreed to take. It was unclear if any of those returnees included minority Muslim Rohingya, who were subject to a genocide at the hand of Myanmar military.
A Myanmar Foreign Ministry official told The Associated Press that only “genuine citizens” were repatriated. Myanmar’s junta has denied that Rohingya are citizens, instead claiming that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Regardless, the United Nations has raised concerns that Myanmar is not a safe country to return migrants to.
Malaysia, however, has insisted that these are all voluntary repatriations, with persons held in immigration detention facilities agreeing to go home. But conditions in said facilities are grim.
These arrivals are part of a wider deportation push by Malaysia and other countries in the region. More than 8,000 migrants have been returned from Malaysia by air this year and nearly 2,000 have returned from Cambodia, according to Myanmar state media.
Rising anti-immigrant sentiment has helped shift Malaysia from a resolute opponent of the Myanmar junta within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to seeking an accommodation in the name of facilitating deportations.
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing is due to visit Malaysia later this month.
Cabinet reshuffle. On Thursday, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto launched a major reshuffle of his cabinet, his seventh and largest to date since he took office nearly two years ago. This comes on the heels of Prabowo appointing his third finance minister last month.
The move looks like an attempt by Prabowo to both inject some technocratic competence into the system in the form of veteran bureaucrats to cement his power.
Foreign Minister Sugiono, a young protégé of Prabowo widely seen as failing to handle his brief, was kicked upstairs to become coordinating minister for human development and cultural affairs. He has been replaced by veteran diplomat Arrmanatha Nasir.
This move somewhat parallels how former Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa, an experienced economist but also a political outsider seen as Prabowo’s man, was replaced by powerful bureaucrat Suahasil Nazara in September.
Politics saw police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo given a pointless promotion to become the head of the presidential office. Listyo was a loyalist of former President Joko Widodo. He served in Surakarta when Widodo was mayor there, and his national ascent tracked Widodo’s.
Replacing him is Suyudi Ario Seto, the former head of the national narcotics agency, who was also a province police commander in Banten in 2024, when the gubernatorial election swung dramatically in favor of a pro-Prabowo candidate.
Suyudi has hit the ground running, replacing all regional police chiefs on the island of Java.
Trump to ASEAN summit? U.S. President Donald Trump is planning to attend the ASEAN summit in Manila, Philippines, which runs Nov. 16-18, according to an exclusive from the South China Morning Post (SCMP). These may then be followed by bilateral talks with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. First lady Melania Trump may also join him, and I will be there too.
The trip would dovetail with Trump’s planned attendance of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, which runs Nov. 18-19.
SCMP reported that Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines had been lobbying Trump to come, hoping that it would signal U.S. commitment to region. Trump did attend the second of last year’s ASEAN summits in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the summit in Manila in 2017.
Since SCMP reported this, there has been no other official information confirming or denying the story.
Since Trump’s ascendancy to the White House, U.S. standing in Southeast Asia has declined sharply. The last ASEAN conference, in Cebu, Philippines, was dominated by the still-ongoing energy shock unleashed by Trump’s Iran war.
Egy Vikri of Indonesia celebrates with the FIFA ASEAN Cup trophy after the team’s victory in the FIFA ASEAN Cup final between Indonesia and Thailand at Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Oct. 5.Robertus Pudyanto/FIFA via Getty Images
Congratulations to Indonesia on their Monday night victory over Thailand in the final for the first FIFA ASEAN Cup, hosted in Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium in Jakarta.
A slow nil-nil game took a sudden dramatic turn with a Thai player sent off in the 80th minute. The subsequent Indonesian free kick deflected off a Thai player Iklas Sanron for a goal. But Thailand swiftly equalized with a screamer from none other than Iklas.
Thailand then drew ahead with a goal in extra time, but Indonesia swiftly equalized. The game settled on penalties, where Indonesia won 4-2.
FP’s Most Read This Week
How the Trump administration got the pro-MAGA head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar out of jail, and what might it mean for U.S.-Myanmar relations, by Gabriele Steinhauser, Alexander Ward, and Patricia Kowsmann in the Wall Street Journal.
Why leave an oil-rich sultanate to pick bananas in Australia? Asif Ullah Khan looks at the problem of Brunei’s unemployed youth in the Diplomat.
The “Land of Smiles” is feeling fed up with badly behaved foreigners. Patpicha Tanakasempipat takes a look at Thailand’s tourism industry for Bloomberg.
In Focus: Sumatran Rhino Double Pregnancy
On Sunday, the Indonesian government announced that two Sumatran rhinos, the world’s most endangered rhino species, had fallen pregnant. Ratu and her daughter Delilah, residents of the Way Kambas National Park on the island of Sumatra, are both due to give birth in May next year.
Just 34 to 47 Sumatran rhinos are thought to still be alive in the wild, spread through four isolated populations.
The world’s smallest rhino is solitary by nature, living in dense tropical forests. Covered with long hair, they are the closest living relative of the woolly rhinos of the Ice Age.
The population may have long been small. Genomic research suggests that changing climate and rising seas meant that 9,000 years ago, the population may have already fallen to just 900 breeding individuals and remained low since.
But in the 19th and 20th centuries, the species still ranged into the Asian mainland, including Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, eastern India, and Bhutan. However, poaching and habitat loss have devastated its numbers.
Now only isolated pockets remain in Sumatra and Borneo. The latter island is home to the Bornean rhino, a subspecies thought to be extinct before being rediscovered in 2016. Two Bornean females in captivity are now being subjected to an attempt at in vitro fertilization via semen from a Sumatran male.
This, plus the breeding facility in Sumatra, represent a last-ditch effort to keep the species alive. Happily, there has been no evidence of this rhino species being poached in more than a decade.
Meanwhile, the Javan rhino is in a perilous state. Its range—which once encompassed Java, Sumatra, and mainland Southeast Asia—has been reduced to a tiny pocket in western Java.
In 2025, it was reported that its numbers had dropped by more than a third, from 76 to 50, after a wave of poaching. The poachers were eventually arrested.
