Attendants prepare to fill glasses for delegates before the opening session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Thursday, March 3, 2016. The more than 2,000 members of China's top legislative advisory body convened their annual meeting Thursday, kicking off a political high season that will continue with the opening of the national congress on Saturday. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)

A rainbow forms on water from a spray machine used to suppress coal dust at the Krasnogorsky open pit coal mine, operated by Mechel PJSC, in Mezhdurechensk, Russia, on Monday, July 19, 2021. Russia’s government is betting that coal consumption will continue to rise in big Asian markets like China even as it dries up elsewhere. (Photo by Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

The clown is on tour at Outlets on June 7, 2020 in Wuhan,Hubei Province,China.Wuhan has seen its urban life gradually get back to normal following encouragement from local city management to open up street-stalls. Since January, China has recorded more than 81,000 cases of COVID-19 and at least 3200 deaths, mostly in and around the city of Wuhan, in central Hubei province, where the outbreak first started. (Photo by Getty Images/Stringer)

Devotees of TikTok, Mona Swain, center, and her sister, Rachel Swain, right, both of Atlanta, monitor voting at the Capitol in Washington, as the House passed a bill that would lead to a nationwide ban of the popular video app if its China-based owner doesn't sell, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Lawmakers contend the app's owner, ByteDance, is beholden to the Chinese government, which could demand access to the data of TikTok's consumers in the U.S. (Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

Madeline is the first person with Down's syndrome to ever stride down a runway as a model during New York Fashion Week. Here: Model Madeline Stuart stands backstage between two male models at New York Fashion Week in New York City, U.S., September 6, 2018. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (L) watches a demonstration of the new Facebook video chat during a news conference at Facebook headquarters July 6, 2011 in Palo Alto, California. Zuckerberg announced new features that are coming to Facebook including video chat and a group chat feature. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A monkey is led by its trainer Qi Defang during training for a circus in Suzhou, Anhui province, November 29, 2014. Suzhou is known as the hometown of circus troupes in China and has more than 300 circus troupes. (Photo by William Hong/Reuters)

Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south, and Thailand to the west. Its population was estimated to be around 6.5 million in 2012. A third (33%) of the country's population lives below the international poverty line which means living on less than U.S. $1.25 per day.