During a reception with donors to the Democratic Party, President Joe Biden put his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on a list of “dictators”.
Referring to the crisis in which the US shot down a Chinese balloon that Washington claimed was a spy, Biden said Xi “didn’t know he was there.”
“It’s very embarrassing for dictators when they don’t know what happened,” he said at a Democratic reception in California.
“when [el globo] dropped [Xi Jinping] He was very embarrassed and denied being there.”
China denounced the remarks on Wednesday as “ridiculous”.
“This comment from the US side is really ridiculous, extremely irresponsible and does not reflect reality,” said Mao Ning, a foreign ministry spokesman. He added that it was “an open political provocation.”
The event comes after the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, concluded a two-day visit to Beijing on Monday, the first by a head of US diplomacy in nearly five years, in an effort to ease tensions between the two world powers. .
Biden also said of China and Xi that they are now “in a position where he wants to have a relationship again,” praising Blinken’s “good job” in Beijing, but cautioning that “it will take time.”
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