Earlier this week, Joe Biden sent his Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China in order to “stabilize” relations that had gotten very cool over the last year. Blinken failed in his primary mission to reestablish communications with the Chinese military, but at least he didn’t blow up U.S.-China relations while he was there.
That, he left for his boss to do. Twenty-four hours after Blinken left China, Joe Biden was at a campaign rally in California and was apparently told that “talking tough” about China was a good way to win votes. So Biden launched into a retelling of how he shot down the Chinese spy balloon almost singlehandedly and stood up to the “dictator” in China.
“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there,” Biden said in remarks at a campaign event in Kentfield, Calif., according to a White House pool report. “That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened.”
Biden didn’t mention that he could have — should have — shot down the balloon after the U.S. picked it up on the radar after launch. He also took far too much credit for the operation.
But referring to Xi Jinping as a “dictator” was bound to raise some hackles in Beijing. And it’s legitimate to question Biden’s timing of the insult. The language used to denounce Biden’s characterization of Xi was unusually harsh.
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China considered Biden’s statements “an open political provocation” to which “China is strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposed,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a briefing Wednesday.
“The remarks made by the U.S. are extremely absurd and irresponsible,” she said. “They are a serious violation of basic facts, diplomatic etiquette, and China’s political dignity.”
It’s not that Biden was wrong. He’s absolutely right in saying that Xi is a dictator. He may have added that the entire, rotten Communist Chinese government is an oppressive, soul-destroying bunch of thugs and throat cutters who have no place in civilized society.
But that would have been too much.
John Delury, a professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, said Biden’s remark could “imperil the diplomatic initiative.”
While Blinken’s mission did not result in tangible agreements or declarations, the “substance was the diplomacy,” Delury said. “It was meeting and being respectful and cordial and sitting down face to face.”
Such an inflammatory remark so soon after the visit, Delury said, “does jeopardize some of what was done.”
So now the White House will once again pick up the damage control portfolio and see if they’ll be able to walk back some of what Biden said. Perhaps the U.S. Ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, could whisper in Xi’s ear, asking him to forgive a senile old man who can no longer control what comes out of his mouth.
How close to the truth that might be, only Biden’s closest aides know for sure.
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