US-China tensions: Biden calls Xi a dictator a day after Beijing talks
www.bbc.co.uk
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.

  • Preston Maness ☭@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    I wish we had a Parenti bot. Nonfalsifiable Orthodoxy etc etc.

    During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

    If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

    ― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism