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.”
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.
China is effectively a dictatorship. It has one political party and Xi Jinping ended the two term limit so he could stay in power. What form of government would you say they have?
It has nine political parties, not one. But also, political parties work differently in a socialist country. You can’t expect other systems to be a 1-to-1 mapping of what you have in your country.
Even in a socialist country with a single party (which is not the case of China), there is competition for leadership.
The leader of China is elected. Really elected, without rigged elections like you see in countries like Russia. That effectively makes it not a dictatorship.
All this talk of China being a dictatorship comes from US propaganda.
So let me try and break a few of the misconceptions created by the US propaganda machine: the leader is elected. People can complain about the government, and they do. Not only that, but the government is regularly reading criticism and using that to make things better. There is no social credit score.
Edit: Actually, the US propaganda is weird. China has been getting flak for its social credit system for years, but they don’t have a social credit system. On the other hand, Italy DOES HAVE a social credit system, but since it’s a western country nobody talks about it.
There may be other political parties but none of them have anywhere near the power of the CPC. They are all subordinate. For example, all election candidates must be approved by the CPC.
Also, the only direct elections in China are at the local level. At higher levels of government everything is chosen by local congresses. This results in a system where the people at the top are very removed from the votes of citizens.
Also, the national Congress largely exists to rubber-stamp whatever Xi Jinping wants. Any opposition would be swiftly stamped out.