Biden will meet China’s Xi Jinping AGAIN after San Francisco talks – and stands by calling him a dictator, White House spokesman John Kirby says

• Biden met Xi Jinping at a country house outside of San Francisco
• The reached agreements on military communications and fentanyl
• John Kirby said the men agreed ‘they would meet again’ 

President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping are planning to meet again following their four hour talk in San Francisco that cemented agreements on fentanyl and defense contacts, the White House said Monday.

National security spokesman John Kirby told reporters another high stakes meeting was on the agenda as he defended Biden’s comment last week where he stood by calling Xi a ‘dictator.’

The comment did not go over well in China’s state-run media, although Xi Jinping gave a speech to American CEOs Wednesday immediately after his sit-down with Biden where he declared China is ‘ready to be a partner and friend of the United States.’  

‘They agreed that they would meet again,’ Kirby told reporters at the White House, adding that there was ‘no date put on a calendar.’

Let’s do this again: President Joe Biden (R) and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at a ‘country house’ outside the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference he hosted in San Francisco. The two men will ‘meet again,’ the White House said Monday

That left it open both when and where Biden would meet again. Biden is not expected to attend the upcoming COP summit in the United Arab Emirates. China isn’t part of the G7, which meets in June in Italy, while the G20 meeting in Brazil isn’t set to take place until November.

Kirby was asked to respond to a statement by China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, who called the president’s ‘dictator’ comment ‘extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation.’

Biden had been asked if he stood by his own prior ‘dictator’ comment. The question came immediately after he wrapped up his meetings with Xi, in an effort to put relations back on track following deep splits over Taiwan, Ukraine, trade, and Chinese military flexing in the South China sea.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby cited ‘deliverables’ in Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping

Aides set up the first meeting between the two men in over a year at a California estate amid dangerously escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing

‘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 responded. ‘Anyway, we made progress,’ he added. 

Kirby spoke to what he called ‘concrete deliverables’ out of the Biden-Xi encounter.

That included reestablishing military-to-military communications and Xi committing to cracking down on the production of chemicals used in the production of fentanyl.

Kirby also mentioned a directive to two teams to ‘start working on artificial intelligence, particularly in the national security realm.’

‘There was an awful lot of very good outcomes out of this meeting between President Biden and President Xi and the President’s looking forward, we’re looking forward to managing this relationship and in a more responsible way, and moving things forward,’ he continued. 

He said the U.S. is ‘looking for ways where we can cooperate, but also not being afraid to confront where we can, including on the tensions in the South China Sea. So the President’s and his whole national security is focused forward now coming out of San Francisco.’

His comments followed a trip to San Francisco where Biden hosted the APEC summit of Asia Pacific leaders, where he lauded Gov. Gavin Newsom and partied with Gwen Stefani, hauled in campaign cash, skipped over hard-to-pronounce corporate names, and met with Mexico’s president, before passing the torch to the Peruvian president for next year’s event. 

Asked about Biden’s ‘dictator’ answer, Kirby said, ‘the President made it very clear that he was asked a direct question he gave a direct answer, and he stands by that direct answer.’

‘That doesn’t mean as true as that statement was doesn’t mean that that there aren’t still prospects here to find ways to cooperate and to compete with China in a more responsible way going forward,’ he said. 

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