China 'rebukes' US ambassador after Biden called Xi a ‘dictator’

The Chinese government has reprimanded the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns over remarks made by President Joe Biden in which he referred to President Xi Jinping as a “dictator”.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, citing three unnamed US officials, Burns received the diplomatic note hours after Biden made comments about Xi at a fundraiser in California.

At the fundraiser on Tuesday, Biden said that Xi was unaware of the alleged Chinese spy balloon that was shot down in US airspace in February, adding, “That’s a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn’t know what happened.”

Hitting back at Biden, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Wednesday said that US President’s “extremely absurd” comments “seriously violated China’s political dignity” and amounted to “political provocation”.

According to The Guardian report, US officials who leaked the news of Beijing’s rebuke of Burns noted that Chinese state media did not publicise the diplomatic note, known as a démarche, seemingly to preserve the goodwill created by US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s visit to China.

One day after Blinken and Xi met in a long-awaited meeting intended to stop the deterioration of US-China relations, Biden made his remarks.

The visit by Blinken was initially scheduled for February but was postponed in the wake of the spy balloon incident.

On Thursday Biden sought to play down the impact of his comments.

“I don’t think it’s had any real consequence,” he told reporters.

“The idea of my choosing and avoiding saying what I think is the facts with regard to the relationship with … China is just not something I am going to change very much,” he added.

Biden said that he still expected to meet Xi in the near future and praised Blinken’s visit to Beijing.

Although Chinese state media has largely ignored the comments, China’s diplomats have made clear that they are unhappy.

On Wednesday, Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to the US, “made serious representations and strong protests” to senior officials at the White House, according to a statement from the Chinese embassy.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said, “The smear of China’s top leader by the US side seriously contradicts basic facts, breaches diplomatic etiquette, infringes on China’s political dignity, runs counter to the commitments made by the US side, and undermines mutual trust.

“We urge the US side to immediately take earnest actions to undo the negative impact and honour its own commitments. Otherwise, it will have to bear all the consequences.”

The US state department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

With inputs from agencies

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