© Reuters. U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Chinese language President Xi Jinping at Filoli property on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation (APEC) summit, in Woodside, California, U.S., November 15, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason
WOODSIDE, California (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden mentioned on Wednesday he had not modified his view that Chinese language President Xi Jinping was successfully a dictator, a remark prone to land with a thud in Beijing after the 2 leaders held easy summit talks.
Biden held a solo information convention after 4 hours of talks with Xi on the outskirts of San Francisco. On the finish of the information convention, he was requested whether or not he nonetheless held the view that Xi was a dictator, one thing he mentioned in June.
“Look, he is. He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours,” Biden mentioned.
In response, China’s international ministry mentioned it “strongly opposes” the remarks, with out mentioning Biden by title.
“This statement is extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation,” international ministry spokesperson Mao Ning instructed reporters on Thursday at a routine briefing.
“It should be pointed out that there will always be some people with ulterior motives who attempt to incite and damage U.S.-China relations, they are doomed to fail.”
Mao refused to specify the identification of “some people” in reply to a follow-up query.
Final March Xi clinched a 3rd time period as president when almost 3,000 members of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the Nationwide Individuals’s Congress, voted unanimously for him in an election by which there was no different candidate.
Xi is taken into account probably the most highly effective Chinese language chief since Mao Zedong, after a decade of consolidating energy in policy-making and the navy, and stifling media freedoms.
There was no rapid response from the Chinese language delegation, which had come to the USA to attend the Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation summit in San Francisco. Lots of of critics of Beijing marched by way of town’s downtown round midday, chanting “free Tibet” and “free Hong Kong.”
When Biden made an analogous dictator reference in June, China known as the remarks absurd and a provocation. However the spat didn’t stop the 2 sides from holding in depth talks geared toward bettering strained relations, which culminated in Wednesday’s assembly.
