Joe Biden held a solo press conference Wednesday to discuss his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the agreements the U.S. has made with the communist country. While walking away from the podium, Biden could be heard calling Xi a “dictator in a sense,” without providing any follow-up explanation.
The American and Chinese leaders met face-to-face for the first time in a year, amid rising tensions between the two countries. Following the meeting, Biden announced that the two countries had reached agreements regarding the flow of fentanyl from China to the U.S. as well as military-to-military communications.
Biden explained that the discussions were “candid and straightforward” but highlighted that the two leaders had not always agreed. These talks come on the heels of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022 and the following Beijing declaration that they were cutting off dialogue with the U.S. on military relations.
In the wake of Biden’s remarks on Xi as a “dictator in a sense”, U.S. lawmakers, notably California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have taken to sucking up to China to try and bridge that gap.
Given the Chinese ruling party’s history of human rights abuses, its territory-hungry expansionism, and its cyber espionage capabilities, it’s not difficult to see why Biden would refer to Xi as a dictator. However, by provoking Xi without a follow-up explanation, Biden’s comments appear to be a symptom of years of underlying strife between the U.S. and China.
In the digital age, nations are more intertwined than ever before and this increasing dependency on each other to carry out international transactions means that there is a huge incentive to cooperate and avoid conflict. But the U.S. and China’s growing geopolitical rivalry has resulted in numerous spats, from trade to technology and now military tensions. The Biden administration has tried to bring some stability by offering talks, yet his “dictator in a sense” remark shows that the underlying distrust and animosity between the two countries remains.
The term “dictator” is a loaded one and strong enough to damage any semblance of a working relationship between the U.S. and China. Biden’s use of it may have been influenced by the president’s concerns regarding China’s human rights abuses and growing international influence, but such a blunt statement isn’t likely to make positive contributions to America’s delicate relationship with the communist country.
Biden abruptly ends his "press conference," shouts at the press, mumbles a few things, and shuffles away pic.twitter.com/jpWIZj51JH
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 16, 2023
In Biden’s true fashion, if he was actually able to solve any tensions, he tossed it all away by opening his big stupid mouth.
In any event, at least now communication between the two countries has been re-established, and with any luck, they’ss stay that way until we can get some real leadership in office.
Calls someone a dictator while he listens to a black queer telling him what to do ..what a joke our government has become