Port visit refusal no big deal

The United States should not misread China's recent refusal to allow one of its aircraft carriers and four accompanying vessels to make a port call in Hong Kong.

Since China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, almost all requests by the US Navy for HK port visits have been approved by Beijing. The few exceptions have mainly occurred when Sino-US ties soured. While the USS John C Stennis and four other ships were not given permission for a port call, the command ship USS Blue Ridge was. Washington should realize why Beijing adopted the different attitudes.

The denied entry of US warships to Hong Kong is only one episode in the broader Sino-US relations and it should cause less of an uproar than the series of tricks the Pentagon has played against China in recent years. However, all these episodes will be trivial if both countries can maintain a general stable relationship and seek cooperation instead of confrontation and both militaries refrain from crossing the other's bottom line.