China's Military Domination

To have any chance of successfully invading Taiwan, then, China would have to establish total air superiority and command of the sea in the area. As Beckley explains, “If Taiwan retained substantial air defenses and offensive strike platforms, a Chinese amphibious invasion would be impossible, because Taiwan could pick off PLA landing craft as they motored across the Taiwan Strait.and sea command in the strait.” Although China has amassed an incredibly large missile force to destroy Taiwan’s defensive capabilities at the outset of a conflict, it would still need to take Taipei by total surprise to be successful.



If Taiwan had some advanced warning of an attack, it could disperse its aircraft to some thirty-six military airfield across the islands, while also relying on a number of civilian aistrips and even some highways that double as emergency air bases. Taiwan also has a bunch of road-mobile missile launchers and anti-aircraft weaponry, as well as a number of ships and submarines capable of attacking Chinese forces with cruise missiles.



As Beckley points out, there is little reason to believe that China would be able to knock out all of these defenses in a surprise first strike. To begin with, Taiwan has sophisticated early warning air defense systems. Moreover, the United States has not even been able to achieve this level of destruction against much lesser enemies like Iraq during the First Gulf War or Serbia in 1999.



But if China was far more successful than the United States had been in those conflicts, Beijing’s ability to execute an amphibious invasion is still far from certain. For instance, Beckley notes that only ten percent of Taiwan’s coastlines are suitable for an amphibious landing, which would allow Taipei to concentrate its forces on a few key areas. Chinese forces trying to land would likely be severely outnumbered.



Thus, even using the the most optimistic assessments (from Beijing’s perspective), China would have its hands full trying to conquer Taiwan. Consequently, Beckley writes, “the United States would only need to tip the scales of the battle to foil a Chinese invasion, a mission that could be accomplished in numerous ways without exposing U.S. surface ships or non-stealth aircraft to China’s A2/AD forces.” More specifically, by the U.S. military’s own estimates, America would need “10,000 to 20,000 pounds of ordnance to decimate a PLA invasion force on the beaches of Taiwan.” This could be done, Beckley notes, using a single B-2 bomber or an Ohio-class submarine.

At least 10 American universities have moved to close their Confucius Institutes in the past year as political pressures over the Chinese government-funded institutions for language and culture education have intensified.



The Confucius Institutes have long been controversial. The centers vary somewhat across different campuses, but they typically offer some combination of Mandarin language classes, cultural programming and outreach to K-12 schools and the community more broadly. They are staffed in part with visiting teachers from China and funded by the Chinese government, with matching resources provided by the host institution. The number of U.S. universities hosting the institutes increased rapidly after the first was established at the University of Maryland College Park in 2004, growing to more than 90 at the peak.

In earlier years the main criticism of CIs, as the institutions are known, came from professors and centered on concerns about academic freedom and institutional autonomy. Concerns about the importation of Chinese state censorship -- as in the case of the reported censorship of materials at a Confucius Institute-sponsored conference in Europe in 2014 -- dominated the conversation. Emblematic of this strain of criticism, the American Association of University Professors issued a report in 2014 urging colleges to close their CIs or renegotiate the agreement to ensure academic freedom and control. The AAUP report asserted, "Most agreements establishing Confucius Institutes feature nondisclosure clauses and unacceptable concessions to the political aims and practices of the government of China. Specifically, North American universities permit Confucius Institutes to advance a state agenda in the recruitment and control of academic staff, in the choice of curriculum, and in the restriction of debate."



Largely the concerns of the professors were ignored by institutions, which continued existing institutes or started new ones up. But over the last year and half, the locus of the debate over Confucius Institutes has shifted from academe to the political sphere as the CIs became tied up in a larger narrative in Washington about Chinese government-influenced activities and espionage-related threats on American campuses.

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Wray, told a Senate panel last February that the FBI was concerned about the institutes. The most prominent critics of the CIs in Washington -- U.S. senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas -- have come from the Republican Party, but Democrats have also raised concerns, as in the case of U.S. representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who has called on Tufts University and the University of Massachusetts Boston to close their CIs.



Some universities have closed the institutes in direct response to concerns voiced by lawmakers. This was true in the case of Texas A&M University, which promptly announced the closure of institutes on two of the system's campuses last April after two Texas congressmen called for them to be shuttered, characterizing the Confucius Institutes as a “threat to our nation’s security by serving as a platform for China’s intelligence collection and political agenda.”

Other universities that have moved to close their Confucius Institutes over the past year cite various reasons related to changing strategies, low enrollments in Chinese language classes or budgetary constraints. University leaders have also expressed concerns about the implications of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law last August, which prohibits the Defense Department from funding Chinese language programs at institutions that host Confucius Institutes except in cases in which the institutions have obtained a waiver. At least one institution -- the University of Rhode Island -- has opted to close its Confucius Institute so as not to jeopardize funding for its Defense Department-funded Chinese Language Flagship program.