In a surprising development, US President Joe Biden once again called his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping a "dictator", hours after a carefully choreographed meeting in California's Filoli Estate for the first time in over a year where they held candid and productive discussions to revive bilateral ties amid fraught relations.
In response to questions from reporters, Biden said, "Well, look, he is (a dictator). I mean, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours."
Notably, Biden had also referred to the Chinese President as a dictator earlier this year, while discussing Xi's reaction to US fighter jets shooting down a Chinese spy balloon over American airspace 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 in it, was he didn't know it was there. That's a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn't know what happened," he said in June.
At that time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met the Chinese President to soothe hostile tensions during a two-day trip to Beijing. In response to Biden's remarks, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning dubbed it an "extremely absurd and irresponsible" remark and said that it was "an open political provocation" that violates diplomatic etiquette.
Biden-Xi meeting
The two leaders met after a year since the G20 Summit in Indonesia last year. “Anyway, we made progress," he told reporters after the four-hour-long meeting, which has been seen a signal of a possible warming of previously hostile relations between Washington and Beijing.
Biden's comment could threaten a backlash from China and can derail the positive energy coming out of the meeting, which Biden described earlier in the news conference as “some of the most constructive and productive discussions we’ve had.”
The most positive news coming out of the crucial meeting was that the two leaders had agreed to restore some military communications that had been suspended since last year. They also pledged cooperation in a number of issues and officials from both sides described it as comprehensive and productive. The two leaders also exchanged views on Taiwan and the ongoing Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine conflicts.
Officials from both countries had worked tremendously hard for this meeting, with senior ministers and secretaries making a series of bilateral visits throughout this year. Biden's meeting with Xi was also questioned by Republicans, who pressed him to challenge China on wrongful detentions of Americans and fentanyl.
The relationship between the two nations has been mostly complex, and at times, strenuous since the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan in 1949. Since then, the two countries have experienced periods of tension and cooperation over issues including trade, climate change, and Taiwan.
However, Biden's present stance on China, which seeks to limit China's diplomatic influence and slow down its economic expansion while upholding US geopolitical primacy, was not expected to shift much. However, the think tank Atlantic Council believes that the American people will support Biden if he continues to have dialogue with China.
(with AP inputs)
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