Frank President equates China’s Xi with dictators

Joe Biden waves off concerns about the Asian giant, telling Democrat donors that ‘China has real economic difficulties’.

Xi Jinping and Joe Biden meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali last November. Picture: AFP

US President Joe Biden equated his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping with “dictators” on Tuesday as he addressed a Democratic Party donors reception in the presence of journalists.

Speaking at a campaign fundraiser in northern California, Mr Biden said Mr Xi had been angered over an incident in February when a Chinese spy balloon flew over America before being shot down by US jet fighters.

“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot down that balloon with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there,” he said. “I’m serious. That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened.

“That wasn’t supposed to be going where it was ... and he didn’t know about it. When it got shot down, he was very embarrassed and he denied it was even there.”

The multi-faceted rivalry between China and the US turned into a full-blown diplomatic crisis with February’s balloon incident.

Mr Biden, who at 80 is running for re-election, on Tuesday waved off concerns about the Asian giant, telling donors that “China has real economic difficulties”.

The remarks are likely to raise objections from Beijing, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited just days earlier in an attempt to lower the temperature between the global powers.

Still on China and Mr Xi, Mr Biden said “we’re in a situation now where he wants to have a ­relationship again”.

Mr Blinken, he said, “did a good job” on his Beijing trip but “it’s going to take time”.

The President did bring up another prickly point regarding communist-ruled China: a recent summit in which leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US – the Quad – sought to boost peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific maritime region.

The four countries are “working hand in glove in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean”, Biden said. “What he (Mr Xi) was really upset about was that I insisted that we unite the ... so-called Quad.”

Tuesday was not the first time Mr Biden has made significant, even provocative, statements at fund-raising receptions, usually small-scale events at which cameras and recordings are forbidden but where journalists may transcribe the President’s opening remarks. At one such event last October, Mr Biden spoke of the threat of nuclear “Armageddon” from Russia.

AFP