President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he still thinks China’s Xi Jinping is a dictator after the pair met for talks in California. Following their summit—the first time Biden and Xi have met face-to-face in a year—Biden held a news conference where he was asked if he still thought of his Chinese counterpart as a dictator as he stated in June. “Look, he is,” Biden answered. “He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours.” Without naming the U.S. president, China’s foreign ministry responded by saying it “strongly opposes” the comment, calling it “extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation.” The response was similar to the one provoked by Biden’s original remark in June, with a foreign ministry spokesperson denouncing the “dictator” label as “extremely absurd” and a “political provocation.”
