A day after meeting Xi during a visit to China by Secretary of State Antony Blinken with the intention of reducing tensions between the two countries, US President Joe Biden referred to Xi as a “dictator” in a statement.
According to Reuters, Biden asserted that Xi was extremely embarrassed when a Chinese balloon was blown off course over the United States earlier this year while speaking at a gathering in California on Tuesday.
Biden explained that Xi Jinping was upset because he was unaware that the balloon contained two box cars full of spy gear, which is why he shot it down.
Dictators should be ashamed of themselves, I say they were in the dark about what had happened. That wasn’t meant to be going in the direction it was. Biden continued, It was blown off course.
China claimed that by shooting down a balloon in February, the United States had violated international law. China-US tensions have risen as a result of the incident.
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The US shooting down of the Chinese weather balloon “does not show the US is strong; on the contrary, it shows it is weak,” according to Wang Yi, China’s director of foreign affairs.
He continued by saying that the attempt to deflect attention from the domestic issues facing the Biden administration included shooting the plane down.
China maintained that the unmanned balloon was used for meteorological and other scientific purposes and had accidentally strayed into US airspace, contrary to claims made by the US that it was built to detect and collect intelligence signals.
The United States, according to Chinese officials, is having economic issues, but China, according to Biden on Tuesday, “has real economic difficulties.”
The so-called Quad strategic security group, which consists of Japan, Australia, India, and the United States, has also reportedly caused Xi concern.
Biden claimed that he had previously assured Xi that the US was not using the Quad to encircle China.
Biden said, “He called me and told me not to do that because it was putting him in a bind.
The comments were made at a time when Beijing’s relations with Washington are at their lowest point since the two governments’ diplomatic relations were established as a result of ongoing differences ranging from trade and technology to territorial disputes and regional security.
This week’s high-stakes trip to Beijing was concluded by Blinken. Blinken mentioned the record-high trade between the two nations in a press conference on Monday, and he added that the US is “prepared to cooperate with China” in promoting “macroeconomic stability.”
Blinken also met with Yi, China’s top diplomat, who cautioned Washington that in its relations with Beijing, it must choose between “dialogue and confrontation.”
Wang, the director of the office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission in the Chinese Communist Party and a position above that of the foreign minister, stated that “it is necessary to make a choice between dialogue and confrontation, cooperation or conflict.”
