Chinese Deny American Vessels Shelter During Storm

On Saturday, Taiwanese papers reported that the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk was refused entry into Hong Kong at the last minute by Beijing authorities.*  Beijing's still seething over the Dalai Lama's visit to Washington.

Today's AP however**, featured a story detailing another incident which was of even greater concern to the U.S. Navy:

[Admiral Gary Roughead] said he was even more troubled by China's refusal, several days before the Kitty Hawk incident, to let two U.S. Navy minesweepers enter Hong Kong harbor to escape an approaching storm and receive fuel. The minesweepers, the Patriot and the Guardian, were instead refueled at sea and returned safely to their home port in Japan, he said.

"As someone who has been going to sea all my life, if there is one tenet that we observe it's when somebody is in need you provide (assistance) and you sort it out later," the admiral said. "And that, to me, was more bothersome, so I look forward to having discussions with the PLA navy leadership," he said, referring to the People's Liberation Army.

[Admiral Timothy] Keating made a similar point. He called the denial in the case of the minesweeping ships "a different kettle of fish for us - in some ways more disturbing, more perplexing" than the Kitty Hawk case because the Chinese action violated an unwritten international code for assisting ships in distress.  [emphasis added throughout]

Next time the American navy needs a safe port during a storm, it might want to consider Keelung or Kaohsiung, instead.  It's, ah, entirely possible that Taiwan would provide it a more hospitable reception.

The Chinese want to send little messages?  Well, perhaps its time they learned that that's something other people can do as well.

(Hat tip to The Tank.)

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* In it's coverage of the Kitty Hawk incident, Taiwan's China Post couldn't help emphasizing the anti-American angle, with the lurid front page headline, 'World of Suzie Wong' hurt by aborted visit.  'Cause like, isn't it obvious that hookers losing their income is the most important part of the story?

** Or possibly yesterday's AP.  Things get tricky when you're dealing with the International Date Line...

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UPDATE (Nov 30/07): Yesterday's Taipei Times featured this story as well.

UPDATE (Dec 16/07):  Tardy in posting this update, but the View from Taiwan had some really excellent analysis of this:

Anyone who has observed China's relations with the outside world for any length of time has seen this pattern again and again. In the midst of negotiations with the Vatican, it consecrates two bishops for the state Church. In the midst of negotiations over the Torch coming to Taiwan, it denies a visa to the representative of the city of Kaohsiung to discuss games held there in 2009. Arriving in India for negotiations, its ambassador announces a whole Indian state is part of China. Some months back the Chinese government shut down an expat magazine in China that was widely considered the most sympathetic and supportive expat rag in the nation. China gets the Olympics, and crackdowns on the internet, and journalists intensify, while state security arrests double. Catch the pattern?

Now Bejing has denied Kitty Hawk a berth in Hong Kong, thus abusing the one service in the US government that has consistently supported it, to the extent that the previous head of PACOM apparently instructed his underlings not to hold military exercises using Beijing as the imagined target. The one service that has consistently displayed an eagerness to form relationships with China. The one service that has imagined itself in partnership with China.

The fact is that in doing all these things, the Navy demonstrated that it had arrayed itself in the proper position of suppliant to the Dragon Throne. Just like those petitioners living in the petitioner's village outside of Beijing, or the local peasant who comes before the mighty magistrate to ask for his benevolence. The Navy thinks it has a right to reciprocity, since it has given so much. But in China there are no rights that apply to one's superiors -- superiors give things out of benevolence, and in both receiving petitions and in handing out benevolence, the great demonstrate their greatness. (In addition to displays of benevolence, the Throne also demonstrates its greatness by abusing those who abase themselves before it. They should be grateful for Our Attention.) From this perspective, when the Navy petitioned China for openness, it validated the greatness of China, and presented itself as a suppliant for imperial benevolence. When it made offerings of information and access to the Throne, that is only right, for gift-making is the proper behavior of suppliants, and the Throne in its Benevolence accepts all gifts. Most regrettably, with its insistence on reciprocity, the Navy has defined itself as a collection of small children making wearisome demands on Throne. If the Navy really understood its relationship to the greatness of the Dragon Throne, it would wait humbly for some display of benevolence, just like those petitioners in the petitioners village outside of Beijing.

Finally, my tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the U.S. Navy should have paid a visit to a Taiwanese port turned out to be not entirely off the mark - the Kitty Hawk steamed through the Taiwan Strait in response to being denied harbor privileges in Hong Kong.  Michael Turton has more on that here.

Comments

[Tom the Redhunter]

Interesting about the minesweepers; I read it on The Tank too. The ChiComs are definitely flexing their muscles. The question is how far they will push things. My guess is not much, they'll do little things like this every year or so. We're talking about the country of Sun Tzu, after all. They won't be blunt.

[The Foreigner]

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When I heard about the Kitty Hawk thing, I figured it was just Chinese being the Chinese. It's expecting too much to count on the use of their ports for recreational shore leave.

Denying shelter during a storm is another matter, however. That's just damn unfriendly.