U.S. Ship Denied Port Call in Hong Kong

China has refused to allow an American naval warship to enter Hong Kong harbor for a routine port call next week, U.S. officials said Tuesday, in a sign of simmering tensions between Beijing and Washington.

Barbara Zigli, spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate here, said the Chinese government gave no explanation for denying the request for the destroyer Curtis Wilbur to visit Hong Kong on April 5-9.

The request, described by Zigli as routine, was made within the framework of a 5-year-old agreement between the countries that governs visits of U.S. military ships and aircraft to Hong Kong, a British colony that reverted to Chinese rule in 1997.

At a briefing in Beijing on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue reminded reporters that such visits are approved on a “case-by-case basis.”

She also left little doubt that the rejection of the port call request was directly connected to recent U.S. moves involving Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.

Zhang demanded that the United States “cease interfering in China’s internal affairs by using Taiwan issues and undermining bilateral ties.”

“To secure a healthy and smooth development of bilateral ties, the U.S. side should properly handle this question,” she warned.

Beijing is believed to be especially upset about the Bush administration’s decision to allow Taiwan’s defense minister, Tang Yiau-ming, to attend a privately funded defense seminar in Florida earlier this month. It marked the latest in a series of steps by President Bush that have demonstrated a new level of support for the island in the 14 months since he took office.

Last year, Bush declared that the United States would do whatever was necessary to defend Taiwan, apparently hardening America’s defense commitment to the island. The administration also offered to sell Taiwan a large package of armaments last year.

Tang is the first Taiwanese defense minister to visit the United States since President Carter severed formal diplomatic ties with Taipei in 1979 as the price of normalizing relations with Communist China. Beijing strenuously opposes any high-level contact between the island’s leadership and Western governments.

The Bush administration reportedly was prepared to grant a visa to Taiwan’s former president, Lee Teng-hui, who had planned to travel to the United States in June. But Lee has since stated that he would stay home because of health reasons.

The ease with which U.S. requests for military port calls in Hong Kong are either rejected or approved has become a kind of de facto bellwether on the state of Sino-American relations.

The last time Beijing rejected a U.S. port call request was in May, when a planned visit by the mine countermeasures support ship Inchon for the following month was turned down. That refusal came as relations between the two countries had deteriorated sharply in the wake of a collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. reconnaissance plane near China’s Hainan island in April.

The latest denial, which Zigli said the U.S. received eight days ago, was made public Tuesday.

Analysts in Hong Kong believe that the refusal to let the Wilbur call in Hong Kong stems more from the Tang visit than any other development.

Robert Broadfoot, managing director of Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, described the action made public Tuesday as “a quick, measured retaliation for the [Taiwanese] defense minister’s visit to the United States.”

“This is probably one of the more modest ways to register displeasure about this,” he said.

Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao, heir apparent to President and Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin, is expected to visit the United States this spring.

On average, 50 to 60 U.S. warships have visited Hong Kong each year since 1997. Since the Inchon was refused entry, two seven-ship aircraft carrier battle groups have made calls in Hong Kong, in August and November.

The Wilbur was scheduled to complete a joint exercise today with the South Korean navy near that country’s coast. Its last port of call was the southern Korean city of Pusan.