After a United States naval destroyer sailed past manmade Chinese islands in the South China Sea last week, and after China itself publicly pronounced it a “provocation”, and the U.S. Ambassador to China was brought in like a child to answer to officials in the Chinese capital, the head of the U.S. Pacific military forces backed down a bit and said Tuesday that it wasn’t at all a threat.

U.S. Navy Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr. was talking to Stanford University students studying at Peking University in Beijing during “his first visit to the Chinese capital as commander of the U.S. Pacific Command” when he made the controversial comments.

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Harris has been outspoken in his criticism of China’s land reclamation in the South China Sea. In March, he said China is “creating a great wall of sand” that is causing serious concern about militarizing reefs and artificial islands in an area of competing territorial claims by several nations.

But in his remarks Tuesday, he was mostly upbeat in his assessment of prospects for improving relations with China.