In a rather blunt admission, President Joe Biden called Chinese President Xi Jinping a dictator on Tuesday. He did so while speaking about a spy balloon that the US shot out of the sky in February.
“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there,” Biden said in remarks at a campaign event in California, per a White House pool report. “That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened.”
Biden’s comment came just after Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a trip to China, where he met with Xi on Monday. Blinken’s trip was delayed from February due to the spy balloon incident.
China’s foreign ministry described Biden’s words as “extremely absurd and irresponsible,” among other things.
The two economic superpowers have expressed an intention to continue cooperative dialogue despite several sources of tension, including the status of Taiwan and China’s role in the American opioid epidemic. The prevalence of ByteDance’s TikTok in the US has also made many in Washington hawkish on the regime.
Xi on Monday said that he saw “progress” in bilateral relations. Blinken, speaking about the trip he took, remarked that the two countries remained far apart, but both held a desire to maintain a meaningful relationship. “The United States is committed to doing that,” he said.
But one guy calling the other a dictator, though perhaps warranted, may put a damper on even nominal good progress.
