U.S. warship barred from Chinese port

HONG KONG -- China has denied an American warship permission to visit a Chinese port, the U.S. Navy said Wednesday, an apparent reflection of flaring trade and military tensions between the two countries.

Cmdr. Reann Mommsen, a spokeswoman for the Navy's 7th Fleet, confirmed the denial in an email and referred further questions to the Chinese government. China's Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to faxed requests for comment.

The United States announced the denial in the same month that it said two U.S. warships had also been denied permission to dock in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory. The latest denial, for permission to dock in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao, was first reported by Reuters.

The moves come as the trade war between China and the United States intensifies, and after nearly three months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, a financial hub that is essential to the Chinese economy. Beijing has blamed the Hong Kong unrest on foreign "black hands" that it says are bent on fomenting an uprising in the former British colony.

Qingdao, along with Hong Kong and Shanghai, are ports where U.S. warships have typically docked in the past. Such port visits have been common over the years, and combine diplomacy and public relations with shore leaves for sailors and Marines.

But China has occasionally denied the warships permission to dock, often at times of heightened tensions between the two countries.

"Whenever there are frictions, you expect this sort of thing to happen," said Collin Koh Swee Lean, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore who studies naval affairs in the region.

Reuters said the U.S. ship was a destroyer, and that the last Navy ship to visit Qingdao was also a destroyer, in 2016.

Koh said that China may have denied planned port visits to Hong Kong earlier this month -- by a U.S. guided-missile cruiser and a transport ship -- out of a fear that allowing them to dock amid anti-government demonstrations could embolden protesters.

By contrast, he said, the latest denial was likely a response to the trade war, which is hurting the Chinese economy, the world's second-largest.

Another likely factor, he added, was the White House's recent decision to move forward with an $8 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, the single largest of its kind in many years. China said in July that it would impose sanctions on U.S. companies involved in arms sales to Taiwan, calling the move "a serious violation of international law and the norms governing international relations."

A Section on 08/29/2019

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