China: Cancellation Of Visit by U.S. Navy No ‘Misunderstanding’
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
BEIJING — China hinted yesterday that Congress’s honoring of the Dalai Lama and American arms sales to Taiwan led it to cancel a U.S. Navy visit to Hong Kong, an incident that could open a new rift in military relations that had warmed in recent years.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, did not draw a direct connection between any specific event and China’s barring of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk and its escort vessels from entering Hong Kong harbor for a planned Thanksgiving visit. However, he said a report from Washington that quoted a Chinese official as calling the incident a misunderstanding was “not in line with the facts.”
He said ties had been “disturbed and harmed” by American actions.
