WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Thursday stood by his recent comparison of the Chinese state and party leader Xi Jinping to a “dictator”, reported German news agency (dpa).
Asked whether his comments, which were blasted by Beijing, risked undermining the recent rapprochement between China and the US, Biden said the answer to the question was “no”.
“The idea of my choosing and avoiding saying what I think… is just not something I’m going to change very much,” Biden told reporters.
The US president emphasised that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had a “great trip to China” earlier in the week.
“I expect to be meeting with President Xi sometime in the future, in the near term. And I don’t think it has had any real consequence.”
At a fundraising event in California on Tuesday, Biden said Xi was upset because he did not know about a surveillance balloon that flew over the US in February that was shot down on Biden’s orders.
“That’s a great embarrassment for dictators when they didn’t know what happened,” Biden said, adding that Xi said he didn’t know about the balloon and when the US Air Force shot it down “he was very embarrassed. He denied it was even there”.
The affair over the suspected spy balloon led to a further deterioration in relations.
Beijing was incensed by Biden’s remarks, calling them “extremely irresponsible” and a “political provocation” on Wednesday.
The new irritations immediately followed the visit by Blinken to Beijing on Sunday and Monday, during which both sides had expressed their intention to stabilise the troubled relations. – BERNAMA-dpa
