US President Joe Biden said Wednesday he still believes Chinese President Xi Jinping is a dictator, even as the two leaders made progress in their relationship during a meeting outside San Francisco.
“Well, look, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours,” Biden told CNN’s MJ Lee. “Anyway, we made progress.”
When asked about Biden’s latest comment at a Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing on Thursday, a spokesperson called it “extremely erroneous” and an “irresponsible political maneuver, which China firmly opposes.”
What a weird way to define a dictator.
Not “he has been in power for an extended period of time in a country with a single ruling party.”
But “he runs a communist country that has a different government than ours”?
I’m not a big fan of President Biden after some consideration I’ve decided I do like his answer. It’s nuanced, which means the Internet won’t understand it, but it answered the question correctly (Yes he is) while making it clear that other countries have different styles of Government that we may not like but must accept if we want to have relations with them.
Countries with Liberal Democracies, like the United States, have no responsibility to lie about another countries style of Government to spare their feelings but we also don’t need to let our distaste preclude us from talking to them.
But that’s just not what Biden said, at all. Here’s what Biden actually said: “he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours.”
This isn’t nuanced, it’s an ignorant and belligerent hot-take. He clearly indicated that either having a different form of government from ours, or being communist, or perhaps the combination of those two things (which is redundant), makes a country a dictatorship. That’s not a straw man reading, it’s what he said, in pretty clear terms. He didn’t say, or even approach saying, any of the things you suggested, except the “yes he is” bit.
Biden spews toxic nonsense almost as badly as Trump, sometimes. Thankfully, not as constantly.
What a weird take.
Care to share yours?
In China you can vote for 1 party but in America you can for for 2 (and 80% of their policies are the same) . Wow!
There are multiple parties in China.
But political parties play a different role in socialist/communist countries. It’s not similar to how it works in most western countries.
Nah its a p good take methinks
It’s as good a take as some news in the US saying everyone in Scandinavian countries are unemployed and lazy, collecting welfare money while doing nothing other than selling cupcakes.
That was an actual (fake) news published in the US. And cupcakes aren’t even a thing in these countries. The person creating the fake news didn’t even research local sweets. They just used whatever they know from the US, because they don’t care to make it look real, just want to spread lies.
The same is true for most things you read about China/Cuba/Korea/etc in the US and similar countries.
What makes it weird?
Everything. Its fully loaded with fake news from the biggest propaganda machine in the world: the US.
There’s no dictatorship in China. But the US spends A LOT of money to make every socialist country look bad, because if people knew there was an alternative to capitalism, most of the ruling class in the US would fall. They can’t let that happen.
Probably aiming for the elderly votes or something. Then again, the guy is old himself so I don’t know.
The core problem, sadly. Millennials and younger can’t relate to his worldview without doing a generational-history deep dive.
I’ll still vote for him if he’s the frontrunner, because I don’t enjoy the thought of the fascist alternative, and he’s done a better job than I expected in a lot of areas, but he won’t get my vote in the primaries.
In what sense is modern China a communist country?
They insist very much that they’re communist. Like, a lot. It’s even on their letterhead and business cards and website!
like the USA likes to imagine it is democratic rather than an oligarchy.
I’d argue that we’re way more democratic than they are communist. But that would be a very long and tedious argument.
Fair and based.
We are still actually an Oligarchy though lol just, like you said, closer to what we claim we are then China is
They think that they are. Part of marxist theory, at least traditional ‘orthodox’ marxist theory is that the development of a capitalist mode of production is essential to development of revolutionary consciousness in the proletariat. The CCP keeps its oligarchs on a leash. They have been allowed to prosper only as part of the rapid modernization of the Chinese economy over the last 30-40 years.
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Why is that weird? Seems fairly commonplace to me. Like, not that it’s necessarily correct, just not weird at all.
Because it is fundamentally wrong.
Wrong != weird.
The US president being wrong about something isn’t weird. I wish it were, but it isn’t. 
Not really. They have a kind of controlled capitalism where they don’t allow the rich to be too greedy or corrupt. The theory is that you can’t go directly from feudalism to communism, you need capitalism first for rapid development.
I think it’s more accurate to say that they don’t allow the rich to be become too powerful, which is very different from allowing them to be overly greedy or corrupt.
For example Jack Ma, he’s no more greedy or corrupt than many other ultra successful Chinese business people and China didn’t care about him until he got too popular and he started speaking negatively about the CCP in public. He was popular, rich, and criticizing the CCP so they took him down.
Ren Zhiqiang is another example. The CCP was fine with him being stupid wealthy and corrupt as hell but then he started getting popular by criticizing the CCP and that they wouldn’t tolerate so “Big Cannon Ren” went to prison.
You don’t need Oligarch status to draw their ire. Remember Peng Shuai? She was popular and became a threat to the CCP after making sexual assault allegations against a high ranking official. They do it to famous people of all types but only after they start criticizing the CCP.
The other way to get in trouble is if your greed and corruption become a threat to the Government. This is why the people behind Evergrande, Country Gardens, Zhongzhi, and other companies got away with INSANE levels of greed and corruption for so long. The CCP knew it was happening and didn’t care until that Greed and Corruption was threatening to topple the economy and thus the CCP itself.
Greed and Corruption? The CCP simply doesn’t care unless it threatens their power.
and what is the destination of late-stage capitalism?
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