China on Thursday judged his American counterpart Joe Biden’s description of its President Xi Jinping as a “dictator” as “extremely false” and described it as “political manipulation” after a summit of the two leaders in California.
“This kind of rhetoric is extremely wrong and represents irresponsible political manipulation.” “China strongly opposes it,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning.
“I must emphasize that there are always people with ulterior motives who try to sow discord and destroy China-US relations, and this will not succeed,” she added.
Asked who she meant, she said: “I think anyone who is trying to undermine China and the United States and sow discord knows that.”
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping agreed on Wednesday to restore high-level military communications between the two countries at their first summit in a year.
They also agreed, among other things, that China will crack down on the production of fentanyl ingredients, a synthetic opiate made from chemical compounds originating primarily in China that cause tens of thousands of overdoses in the United States each year.
However, when asked by a reporter about a meeting with Xi Jinping on Wednesday, Joe Biden replied that he still viewed the Chinese president as a “dictator.”
“He is a dictator in the sense that he is a man who runs a country, a communist country, based on a completely different form of government than ours,” he said during a news conference on Thursday.
The comparison at the beginning of the year triggered Beijing’s anger.