- Days later, at the APEC summit in San Francisco, the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a scene was a topic of conversation.
- It was a moment on the sidelines of the sensational meeting between US President Joe Biden and China’s head of state Xi Jinping: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was on the verge of despair when Biden once again called Xi a “dictator” at the end.
- Video clips of Blinken’s reaction to his boss’s statement spread rapidly online in the days that followed.
Back to top: Biden gave a press conference outside San Francisco after meeting with Xi. He had just finished announcing that the extremely tense relations with China had been brought back into somewhat more orderly shape. That was the whole point of the meeting, which Blinken and other government officials had been working toward for months in a diplomatic balancing act.
Biden stepped away from the desk and was about to leave the room when reporters shouted more questions at him. Biden responded to that question: Whether he would continue to call Xi a “dictator” after the meeting. Biden replied: “Look, that’s him.” Xi is a dictator in the sense that he leads a communist country “based on a form of government that is completely different from ours.”
The sufferings of the chief diplomat
It was only later that footage from television cameras became public showing Blinken in the front row at the press conference – and his reaction to Biden’s answer. Even when asked the question, Blinken visibly sighs, rolls his eyes, presses his lips together and folds his arms on his lap. He briefly looks pleadingly in the direction of the president. As he begins to answer, Blinken begins to convulsively press his hands together.
Legend:
You can see the pain on his face: Antony Blinken during Biden’s press conference after meeting Xi.
CNN
And after the critical first words are out, Blinken turns his head to the side and grimaces, as if he were experiencing physical pain. He furrows his forehead, closes his eyes briefly and struggles to compose himself.
Blinken regained his composure
As expected, the Chinese government criticized Biden’s statement as “wrong” and “irresponsible.” In an interview with the US television network CBS, Blinken was later asked what was going through his mind at the press conference given the diplomatic complications at that moment and whether it was the general line of the US government to label Xi a “dictator”.
The President always speaks openly, and he speaks for all of us.
The minister had long since regained his composure and said, as usual, diplomatically: “The President always speaks openly, and he speaks for all of us.” And: The US government will probably continue to “say and do things that China doesn’t like” – and vice versa.