Washington (EFE).- US President Joe Biden said Thursday that he will meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in the “near future” and assured that calling him a “dictator” has not harmed the bilateral relationship.
Biden made those comments at a joint news conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House.
Biden and his strong qualification for Xi
A journalist asked Biden about the statements he made on Tuesday during a fundraising event, when he referred to his Chinese counterpart as a “dictator”, the first time that a US leader had referred to Xi in this way.
Asked if his comments have strained the statements with Beijing, Biden replied “no” and expressed his desire to meet with Xi soon.
“I hope to meet with President Xi at some point in the future, in the near future, and I don’t think (those comments) have had any real consequence,” the US president said.
Biden considered that the recent visit to China by the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, was constructive and served to improve the relationship between the two nations.
During his visit, Blinken met with Xi, among other senior Chinese government officials, and expressed Washington’s desire to keep lines of communication open with Beijing to prevent competition between the two nations from escalating into a conflict with global consequences.
A tension that comes and goes
China and the United States lived a time of great tensions during the Government of Donald Trump (2017-2021), when both nations got involved in a trade war with the mutual imposition of tariffs.
There was, however, a rapprochement when Biden and Xi met in November 2022 on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali.
However, relations soured again after the Biden government shot down an alleged Chinese “spy” balloon that flew over the United States in late January and fell over Atlantic waters on February 4.
That incident caused Blinken to cancel a then-planned trip to China; But Washington hopes that relations will improve with the recent visit of the Secretary of State, the first by a head of US diplomacy since 2018.