Antony Blinken’s hard work ‘down the drain’ after Joe Biden’s response to dictator question

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s hard work with China went “down the drain” after Joe Biden’s response to a question on whether the President would still call Xi Jinping a dictator, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer says. The two leaders met on the sidelines of the APEC summit to discuss ways to manage strategic competition between the two global superpowers and improve lines of communication. At the end of a press briefing on Wednesday, local time, President Biden was asked if he’d continue labelling his Chinese counterpart as a dictator, a term he’d used earlier in the year. “Well, look, he is,“ he said. “I mean, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is the guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours anyway (inaudible)”. A Chinese Foreign Minister spokesperson said the comments were “extremely incorrect and irresponsible political manipulation”.