When Biden called a spade a spade, China cried foul

How can competitive co-existence be possible?

- NARAIN BATRA

No other global leader would have mustered the courage to call President Xi Jinping of China a dictator, as President Joe Biden did during his recent 2024 election fund-raising visit in California. It wasn't a senior moment, a slip of the tongue in an unguarded moment, because later on Biden defended his remark without any regrets, when he said, "just not something I'm going to change very much." In spite of fierce outrage from Beijing, Biden said that he would nonetheless meet with Xi sometime soon.

Ironically, this happened just after Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned from China, where he had gone to mend fences after the shooting of the Chinese spy balloon had created a diplomatic furore. After the conciliatory meeting with President Xi, Secretary Blinken said that he had no illusion about how profound and vehement the disagreements were between the two nations about Taiwan's de facto separate and self-governing status as a democratic country; China's hegemonic efforts to dominate the South China Sea; China's support for Russia's aggression against Ukraine; China's technology and intellectual property thefts; and China's role in the smuggling of synthetic drugs that has led to the fentanyl crises.

It's worth noting that Secretary Blinken's visit took place on the backdrop of the recent revelations that China was building a spy base in Cuba, as the Wall Street Journal reported. Putting up a cheerful diplomatic face, Secretary Blinken said that the relations with China could be managed, nonetheless.

The United States has always managed to work with dictators without however giving up on its ideals of maintaining the liberal democratic global order based on the rule of law. Which dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are challenging now on the mistaken belief that the United States and the West are in a state of irretrievable decline.