Face-to-face meeting can chart safer course

The ongoing three-day visit by US Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson to China, which started on Sunday, comes at a sensitive time, following an arbitral tribunal ruling last week that seeks to invalidate China's historic claims in the South China Sea.

The impulse of the United States and some of its allies, such as Japan, is to insist the ruling is legally binding and to enforce it with patrols in the name of "freedom of navigation".

But using military force to make China succumb to "a scrap of paper" that it neither accepts nor acknowledges will be of no avail. Although China desires peace and is committed to peaceful settlement to the South China Sea disputes, there will be no room for compromise on an issue that concerns its core national interests.