U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken got visibly rattled when President Joe Biden called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator” ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).
In response to CNN’s MJ Lee question on whether Biden will still refer to Xi as a dictator, the president said he is a dictator who runs a communist country. Blinken did not appear happy with the president’s response.
“Well look, he is [a dictator],” the president said. “I mean, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy that runs a country that is a communist country and a form of government totally different than ours.”
Biden and Xi met face-to-face for the first time in a year during their trip to San Francisco, California. The White House previously said the two leaders would talk about “maintaining open lines of communication” between the two countries and a “range of regional and global issues.” (RELATED: Conservatives, Social Media Users Rage Over Chinese Communist Flags Flying Across San Francisco)
The two reached an agreement on combating the production of fentanyl and resuming military-to-military communications. Fentanyl, a highly deadly drug, has flooded across the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years, much of it coming from China. Xi agreed to take action to “dramatically curtail” the creation of precursors to fentanyl.
A few days before the meeting, the Chinese state media appeared optimistic that Xi would get what he wanted from Biden following the meeting.