US-China tensions: Biden calls Xi a dictator day after Beijing talks
US-China tensions: Biden calls Xi a dictator day after Beijing talks
The US leader makes the remark just after talks aimed at easing tensions between the countries.
By Derek Cai BBC News
US President Joe Biden has called Chinese President Xi Jinping a dictator at a fundraiser in California.
His remarks come a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Mr Xi for talks in Beijing, which were aimed at easing tensions between the two superpowers.
Mr Xi said some progress had been made in Beijing, while Mr Blinken indicated both sides were open to more talks.
China is yet to respond to Mr Biden's comments.
President Biden, at the fundraiser on Tuesday night local time, also said Mr Xi was embarrassed over the recent tensions around a Chinese spy balloon that had been blown off course over the US.
"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," Mr Biden said.
"That's a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn't know what happened."
Mr Blinken's visit to Beijing - the first by a top US diplomat in almost five years - restarted high-level communications between the two countries. Both Mr Biden and Mr Xi hailed it as a welcome development. But Mr Blinken made clear that major differences remain between the two countries.
Washington and Beijing have long locked horns over an array of issues including trade, human rights, and Taiwan.
But relations have especially deteriorated in the past year. With the US election looming and tensions with China emerging as a political issue, some Republican senators have attacked the Biden administration for being "soft" on China.
The United States is a deeply unserious country.
0Every now and then they produce idiocy like this for their internal usage, and then they seem to really be completely surprised when the rest of the world take note.
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surely having a man so old that his mental faculties have completely rotted won't be harming foreign relations hahaha i hate it here
0I mean, at some point as a head of state you probably just ignore anything he says.
-2i mean, if you look at the footage of diplomatic meetings you can see very obviously by Xi's body language that he takes the presidents of nations like Barbados or Zambia much more seriously than people like Biden or Trudeau
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Are box cars an official term of measurement in the states now? Man, the imperial measurement systems are weird.
“That’s a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn’t know what happened.”
Unlike Biden, President Xi is pretty aware of what is happening in and around his country. I have little doubt he knew what happened to the balloon, but I also can't imagine he was particularly embarrassed about it. He wasn't the one who missed shooting at a freaking balloon.
-2Fun fact: entire F-22 program cost 80 billion dollars so far, and for that price, their complete list of air victories is:
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