I think Lao will be taken over sooner than Thailand. Yunan 40 million Chinese people while Lao has 6 and a half. Within a year Lao will be easily conquered if China is willing.
China and Vietnam's Tug of War over Laos,
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=25389"In 1997, Laos urged China to help bail out the economy by increasing aid, trade, and investment. China – largely insulated from the effects of the economic crisis – saw its chance to increase its influence over Vientiane and responded positively with a series of bilateral agreements covering economic and technical cooperation, investment and banking, and infrastructure development. Generous export subsidies and interest-free loans provided by Beijing enabled Laos to stabilize the value of its currency during a crisis in 1998-1999. President Jiang Zemin's visit to Laos in November 2000, the first by a Chinese head of state, was emblematic of China's newfound relationship with the LPDR. Since then, the two countries have regularly exchanged high-level visits.
According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Lao-China two-way trade grew from $33.1 million in 1990 to $118.3 million in 2003, much of it in China's favor. [2] This makes China Laos' third biggest trade partner, though these figures almost certainly underestimate the large and lucrative cross border trade which remains off the books. According to China's Xinhua News Agency, Beijing's financial assistance to Laos during 1988-2001 amounted to $1.7 billion. [3] In June 2003, Beijing agreed to cancel much of this debt. In 2004, the government controlled Vientiane Times put total PRC investment in Laos since 1988 at $342 million, placing it among the top three foreign investors. [4] The economic importance of China to Laos was underlined at the LPRP's Seventh Party Congress in 2001 when Prime Minister Boungnang Vorachit pledged to halve the number of people below the poverty line from two to one million and triple per capita income to $1,200-1,500 by 2020 – in order to achieve these targets Boungnang highlighted the need to expand economic ties with China. [5]
China's future economic role in Laos will expand for three reasons. Firstly, China's voracious appetite for Laos' natural resources. Secondly, Lao goods cannot compete with cheaper Chinese goods in the domestic market. Thirdly, since Laos' opening up to the outside world, it has relied heavily on economic aid from countries like Japan, Sweden, France, and Australia, as well as multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, IMF, and ADB. Donor fatigue is beginning to set in as the Lao government resists pressure to fundamentally reform the country's legal, financial and, most sensitively, political systems. The PRC, on the other hand, provides aid to Laos without calling for major reforms that would loosen the LPRP's control over the political and economic life of the country.
China and Vietnam are strategic competitors for influence over Laos. For the present, the personal ties between senior LPRP and VCP leaders ensure that Hanoi maintains the upper hand in terms of political influence. But this situation will not last forever. Once senior LPRP leaders pass from the scene, Vietnam's influence will diminish accordingly. The next generation of LPRP cadres has little direct experience of the revolutionary period that brought the party to power, and the crucial role Vietnam played in its success. The beginnings of a generational shift are already underway, and the Eighth Party Congress scheduled for 2006 may see the retirement of a cohort of elderly leaders. While talk of "pro-China" and "pro-Vietnam" factions within the party is almost certainly overplayed (the LPRP looks to both countries for aid, trade, and investment), it is true to say that fraternal feelings toward Vietnam are much stronger among the older generation than the younger generation.
China can offer Laos everything Vietnam currently provides plus much more. Obviously China's economy is much larger than Vietnam's, and its gravitational pull on Laos is enormous. China's "soft power" is also growing. Increasingly, LPRP cadres are traveling to China to attend seminars on how to transition from a command to "socialist market" economy – something China has much more experience with than Vietnam. The Chinese government has substantially increased the number of scholarships available to Laotians to study at Chinese universities. Lao-PRC military-to-military ties are also expanding, with more Laotians undertaking officer training in the PRC, and China is in a much better position than Vietnam to help modernize the cash-strapped Lao armed forces.
In the competition for influence over Laos, China has adopted a long-term strategy. Beijing is prepared to wait until the older generation of LPRP leaders with strong fraternal bonds to Vietnam fade from the political scene. In the meantime, China nurtures younger LPRP cadres through its large diplomatic presence in Vientiane and by bringing members of the Lao elite to the PRC to undertake ideological, vocational, and military education. At the same time, Beijing carefully targets its aid programs in Laos to achieve maximum effect with minimum resources. Thus, China has financed high-profile initiatives such as civic beautification projects in central Vientiane and a $7 million cultural center. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this lavish building now hosts LPRP party congresses.
Laos' failure to achieve economic self-sufficiency since colonial times has reduced it to the status of perpetual mendicancy. Within the next decade or so, China seems destined to become the LPDR's largest trade partner and source of external funding, and hence its new closest friend in Asia."