City BeatWatching The Martian reiterates the importance of Sino-US cooperation in wake of Xi Jinping's state visit

It was an amazing experience watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster The Martian a few days ago. The incredible story of how astronaut Mark Watney tried to survive, alone, on Mars was not only thrilling but funny. Yet, what amazed me more was how, at the end, the "bring him home" mission was possible, thanks to the joint efforts of Nasa and China's space agency.

Such a plot is likely to win this movie a bigger audience on the mainland. Whether that was the reason for these scenes, we don't know, but message was there: US-China cooperation helps.

Back to reality on planet earth, many are still debating how fruitful President Xi Jinping's just concluded state visit to the US was. But regardless of different perspectives and disagreements, judging from the list of "achievements" both sides announced - though China spelled out 49 items while the US list seemed shorter - that didn't prevent the two sides from cooperating in major areas of mutual interest.

Hong Kong came up: Obama told Xi that the US would not interfere in Hong Kong affairs, a point that was reported only by the state-run Xinhua and CCTV hours after their summit. It was later played up by quite a few local media outlets in the city.

Such a brief "no-interference" pledge could be no more than a diplomatic restating of Washington's existing stand, and the fact that it was not mentioned during the Xi-Obama joint press conference, or in any briefing on the US side, tells something. But it's also common sense that without consent from the US side, China would not have made this point public. Xinhua's report was brief, simply saying Obama had "reiterated" the US would stay away from Hong Kong affairs, and would not support independence for Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet .