Photo: Reuters-
Metropolis Desk-
At a charity event in California, US President Joe Biden referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as a dictator. A day earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Mr. Xi in Beijing for talks aimed at reducing tensions between the two nations. His statements followed those meetings.
In addition, Mr. Biden claimed that Mr. Xi felt humiliated as a result of the US shooting down a purported Chinese spy balloon.
China proclaimed that it “firmly opposes” Mr. Biden’s remarks.
“Xi Jinping didn’t know it was there, which is why he got very upset when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy gear in it,” Mr. Biden remarked at the ceremony on Tuesday.
“That causes dictators a lot of shame. When they were unaware of what had occurred,” he continued.
The balloon floated over the US mainland before being shot down by American military jets in February, according to China, which claims it was doing weather monitoring.
Later, Washington said that it was a component of a vast Chinese program for gathering intelligence. Following the event, Mr. Blinken, who was scheduled to travel to Beijing at the moment, postponed his journey.
The press secretary for China’s foreign ministry, Mao Ning, referred to Mr. Biden’s comments as “extremely absurd and irresponsible”. She said that the remarks were “an open political provocation” that went against diplomatic etiquette while addressing the media on Wednesday during a regularly scheduled news briefing.
It was unclear why Biden claimed that Xi was uninformed of the location of the balloon, and when Mao was questioned if Xi knew where it was, he maintained China’s earlier denial that it had any control over the balloon’s accidental entry into the US airspace.
The US secretary of state’s first visit to China in over five years, Mr. Blinken’s visit over the weekend, reopened high-level dialogue between the two nations.
While Mr. Blinken said that all parties were willing to continue talking, Mr. Xi claimed that some progress had been achieved in Beijing. But there are still some significant distinctions between the two nations.
Following a trade battle under Trump, Beijing’s strong claims over Taiwan, and the shooting down of the suspected spy balloon, relations have deteriorated.
Source- BBC News
