The President of the United States, Joe Biden has defended calling Chinese President Xi Jinping a ‘dictator’, just days after their countries hailed modest progress in cooling tensions.
During a joint press conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, Biden said his blunt statements about China are ‘just not something I’m going to change very much’.
‘I expect to be meeting with President Xi sometime in the future, near-term. And I don’t think it’s had any real consequence,’ he said.
The ‘dictator’ comment reportedly came at a campaign fundraiser in California earlier in the week. At the event, Biden described the Chinese leader as being out of the loop during an incident involving a Chinese spy balloon drifting over the US.
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‘That’s a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn’t know what happened,’ Biden said at the fundraiser.
‘That wasn’t supposed to be going where it was. It was blown off course.’
The statement came a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken completed a trip to Beijing, becoming the highest-level official to visit the country since Biden took office in January 2021.
Both sides reported tentative success at lowering tensions during the visit, which was expected to lay the groundwork for a possible official meeting between Biden and Xi.
On Thursday, China’s embassy in Washington said it had issued a formal protest against Biden’s comments.
‘With the latest irresponsible remarks about China’s political system and its top leader, people cannot help but question the sincerity of the US side,’ the embassy said in a statement.
‘The Chinese government and people do not accept any political provocation against China’s top leader and will resolutely respond,’ it added.
Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng had previously told senior US officials on Wednesday that they “should take earnest actions to undo the negative impact” of what Biden said or “bear all the consequences”.