Source: Xinhua News Agency / Getty
President Joe Biden had his first meeting in over a year with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Biden and Xi Jinping met face to face Wednesday in San Francisco on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Biden said afterward that they had agreed to revive dormant military communication channels, crack down on fentanyl trafficking and work jointly to address rapid advances in artificial intelligence.
At a news conference afterward, Biden said, “I believe they were some of the most productive and constructive discussions we’ve had.”
During the meeting, Xi Jinping called the partnership between the U.S. and China “the most important bilateral relationship in the world”, saying that “planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed.”
Shortly after the meeting at a news conference, Biden was asked whether he saw Xi as a dictator, the term he used to describe Xi over the summer. Biden said “He is a dictator.” He added that Xi “runs a communist country who system is fundamentally different from that of the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared to be wincing and shaking his head in reaction to Biden referring to Xi as a dictator.
