Antony Blinken flinches as Joe Biden calls China’s Xi Jinping ‘dictator’ | Watch video

Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, was spotted flinching in apparent disapproval when United States President Biden called China’s President Xi Jinping a “dictator”. The video of Joe Biden calling Xi Jinping a “dictator” surfaced a day after Joe Biden met his Chinese counterpart Xi on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

Anthony Blinken, 61, visibly grimaced and was seen fiddling with his hands when Joe Biden said Xi “is a dictator in the sense that he is the guy who runs the country that is a communist country … based on a form of government different than ours” at a press conference.

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Joe Biden's remark came shortly after he met Xi Jinping for four hours in San Francisco before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference. The conference marked the two leaders’ first in-person meeting in a year.

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While President Xi Jinping, after his meeting with Biden, said China intends to be friends with the US and said his nation would not fight a war with anyone, one of his strongest remarks yet expressing his wish for harmonious relations between the world’s two largest economies, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Former Italian diplomat Marco Carnelos in a post on social media platform X called out Anthony Blinken’s “desperate body language” in response to Joe Biden’s statement.

“Twelve months of hard work & diplomacy thrown in the toilet with a simple word…,” he wrote.

In June, Joe Biden had referred to Xi Jinping as a dictator, prompting an angry response from Beijing. Anthony Blinken is still dealing with the fallout.

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