‘More embarrassing than intentional’: Joe Biden on this Xi Jinping misstep
Joe Biden said, “China has some legitimate difficulties unrelated to the United States."
US president Joe Biden said that he hopes to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping within the next few months saying that Beijing's leaders weren’t aware of details surrounding an alleged spy balloon that the US shot down in February.
“China has some legitimate difficulties unrelated to the United States. I think one of the things that balloon caused was not so much that it got shot down. But I don’t think that the leadership knew where it was or knew what was in it and knew what was going on," Joe Biden said.
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“I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional,” he said before boarding Air Force One adding that he’s “hoping that over the next several months I’ll be meeting Xi again.”
Joe Biden’s comments coincide with a trip by US secretary of state Antony Blinken to Beijing to meet senior Chinese officials in an attempt to lower tensions between the world’s two biggest economies. Blinken’s original trip was postponed after the uproar over the spy balloon that had crossed the US from west to east before being shot down by a fighter jet off the South Carolina coast.
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met in Bali, Indonesia last November. Moreover, on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Moscow delivered its first tactical nuclear weapons to neighboring Belarus, Joe Biden reiterated that he views the move as “totally irresponsible.”