Biden’s off-the-cuff answer threatens to cast a shadow on the fragile diplomatic ceasefire between Washington and Beijing.
President Joe Biden raised eyebrows on Wednesday when he called Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping a «dictator,» a comment that may jeopardize the fragile achievements of their long-awaited summit.
At a press conference after the talks, Biden said he would still consider Xi a dictator because of the nature of China’s authoritarian system. It was the second time this year that the U.S. president had deployed the unflattering descriptor—a departure from the smiles and warm handshake the two had exchanged just hours earlier.
The meeting, which took place on the margins of the APEC leaders’ forum in San Francisco, was for months billed as a chance for the world’s two most powerful countries to partially reset a relationship that had grown rancorous from divisions over trade, human rights, espionage, Taiwan and a bevy of other issues.
«Well, look. He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who rules a country that is a communist country, that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours,» Biden said.
A video showed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was sitting on the front row during the presser, becoming visibly uncomfortable as Biden made the off-the-cuff remark.
