China upset at Kitty Hawk's Taiwan Strait transit

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Tuesday it had voiced "grave concern" to Washington after the USS Kitty Hawk sailed through the Taiwan Strait, just days after an aborted port visit to Hong Kong.

After first denying entry to the carrier and its accompanying strike group for a long-planned stopover during last month's U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, Beijing changed its mind and said the ships could dock after all in the southern city.

But by then the Kitty Hawk and its support flotilla was heading back to its home port in Japan via the Taiwan Strait, the narrow channel dividing mainland China from self-ruled Taiwan which Beijing considers its territorial waters.

According to the U.S. Navy, "the route selection was based on operational necessity, including adverse weather".

A typhoon did strike the South China Sea near the Philippines that week, but Beijing was unimpressed by the U.S. explanation.

"The United States informed China at that time and said it took that route due to a storm," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told Tuesday's regular news conference.

"China expressed grave concern to the United States and requested it to take prudent actions in this sensitive area."

Beijing has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949 when Mao Zedong's Communists drove Chiang Kai-shek's defeated Nationalists to the island.

Tensions between the two entities have played out in the strait several times since then, most recently when China conducted military exercises there in 1995 and 1996, prompting the United States to send warships there.