President Joe Biden said his remarks referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a dictator haven’t undermined efforts to shore up strained relations between the world’s two largest economies.
“I expect to be meeting with President Xi sometime in the future, the near term and I don’t think it’s had any real consequence,” Biden said in a joint press conference on Thursday with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House.
Biden made the off-the-cuff remark about Xi at a donor event on Tuesday, saying the Chinese leader was embarrassed by his military sending an alleged spy balloon across the US without his knowledge.
“That’s what’s a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened,” said Biden.
Read more: Biden’s ‘Dictator’ Xi Riff Undercuts Painstaking China Diplomacy
China immediately hit back at Biden’s comments, calling them provocative.
On Thursday, Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said the remarks were “erroneous, absurd and irresponsible” and that Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng had protested the remarks to senior White House officials and the US State Department.
“We urge the US side to immediately take earnest actions to undo the negative impact and honor its own commitments. Otherwise, it will have to bear all the consequences,” Liu said.
The Biden administration had insisted there was no reason for the president to clarify his statement and that the US would always be forthright and blunt when talking about its differences with China.
The timing of Biden’s remark was noteworthy as it came while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was still on his way back from Beijing where he engaged in two days of carefully choreographed diplomacy that appeared to decrease tensions between the countries.
“The idea of my choosing and avoiding saying what I think is the facts with regard to the relationship with China is just not something I’m going to change very much,” said Biden on Thursday.
“Secretary Blinken had a great trip to China,” he added.
Blinken’s talks didn’t yield any major breakthroughs and more importantly, did not result in a resumption of military-to-military communications.
Still both sides said Blinken had made progress in normalizing relations and the secretary of state also met with Xi. Biden and Xi are set to talk by phone at some point and the two will have an opportunity to meet at the Group of 20 leaders’ summit in India in September.
--With assistance from Jacob Gu and Justin Sink.
(Updates with additional quotes, background from fifth paragraph)
