你給我吐痰，我說你獨裁　Dictator Xi for Beijing's spit diplomacy

【雙魚之論】英文拷到 G / D 找中文翻譯 US President Joe Biden is an experienced politician compared to his rawly Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Biden sent Blinken to China to ease tense relations with the country. However, Blinken and the entire delegation received a series of rude treatments. No red carpet in the airport is the least issue. The rude treatments, or diplomatic spit in the face, include Chairman Xi, who acts like a master in a classroom, lecturing his students, the US delegation. Blinken could have had responded in several ways to express his dissatisfaction and impatience, including taking a few steps backward to gain a few seconds of time, then sitting down after Xi had already sat down, or crossing his arms in front of his chest when Xi was lecturing, or expressing detachment when Xi is speaking. A day later, at his fundraising event for the 2024 Campaign in San Francisco, Biden responded orally to Xi by commenting on the balloon incident, saying, "That's a great embarrassment for dictators when they don't know what happened." Describing the leader of a foreign state as a "dictator" is equivalent to question, or even to deny, his legitimacy to rule in the country. It is doubtful whether there will be a formal meeting between the two powers at the G20 in India in September or APEC in November.

美國總統喬·拜登相較於他的國務卿安東尼·布林肯，是一位經驗豐富的政治家。 拜登派遣布林肯前往中國，以緩和與該國的緊張關係。然而，布林肯和整個代表團遭受了一系列粗魯的對待。機場沒有紅地毯只是其中最小的問題。 粗魯的對待或稱為吐痰外交，包括主席習近平以課堂導師的姿態對待他的學生，也就是美國代表團。布林肯本可以以幾種方式回應，表達他的不滿和不耐煩，包括向後退幾步以贏得幾秒鐘的時間，然後在習近平已經坐下後再坐下，或者在習近平講話時將手臂交叉放在胸前，或者表達心不在焉的態度。 一天後，拜登在舊金山為2024年競選籌款活動中藉由評論氣球事件以口頭方式回應：「對獨裁者來說，當他們不知道發生了什麼事時，這是太丟臉了。」 將外國國家的領導人描述為「獨裁者」等同於對其統治合法性提出質疑，甚至是否定。 目前對於九月的印度G20峰會或十一月的APEC會議是否會有兩國間的正式會晤存在疑慮。

表單的頂端

US-China tensions: Biden calls Xi a dictator a day after Beijing talks BBC 20230621

US President Joe Biden has called Chinese President Xi Jinping a dictator at a fundraising event in California.

His remarks came a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Mr Xi for talks in Beijing, which were aimed at easing tensions between the two superpowers.

Mr Biden also said Mr Xi was embarrassed after an alleged Chinese spy balloon was shot down by the US.

China said it "firmly opposes" Mr Biden's comments.

"The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset, in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment in it, was he didn't know it was there," Mr Biden said at the event on Tuesday.

"That's a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn't know what happened," he added.

The balloon, which China says was monitoring weather, drifted across the continental US before being destroyed by American military aircraft in February.

Washington later said it was part of a sprawling Chinese intelligence collection programme. Mr Blinken, who was meant to visit Beijing at the time, postponed the trip in the wake of the incident.

China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning called Mr Biden's remarks "extremely absurd and irresponsible". Speaking at a regularly scheduled press conference on Wednesday, she said that the comments were "an open political provocation" that violated diplomatic etiquette.

Mr Blinken's visit over the weekend, the first by a US secretary of state in almost five years, restarted high-level communications between the two countries.

Mr Xi said some progress had been made in Beijing, while Mr Blinken indicated both sides were open to more talks. Major differences, however, remain between the two countries.

Relations have plummeted in the wake of a Trump-era trade war, Beijing's assertive claims over Taiwan and the shooting down of the alleged spy balloon.

Biden calling China’s leader a ‘dictator’ opens new rift just after Blinken’s tensions-easing trip AP 20230622

President Joe Biden’s remarks calling Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “dictator” and China a country with “real economic difficulties” drew fast condemnation from China on Wednesday, cracking open a new rift just after the two countries agreed to tentative steps to stabilize the relationship.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning condemned Biden’s unusually pointed comments as “extremely absurd and irresponsible.”

The clash of words comes after Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded a visit to Beijing on Monday that sought to break the ice in a relationship that has hit a historical low. While both sides saw those talks as productive, they did not result in any significant breakthroughs beyond an agreement to return to a broad agenda for cooperation and competition.

China’s quick response to Biden, a president known for seemingly off-script remarks that venture beyond his administration’s policies, raises questions whether his remarks would undo the limited progress that had been made in Blinken’s carefully engineered trip or whether the two sides would move on.

Biden’s characterization of China comes as the campaign for next year’s presidential election is already taking off, with Republicans accusing him of being weak on China.

Biden also was preparing to welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington on Wednesday evening for a lavish state visit where a central theme will be a shared wariness of China.

Biden, at a fundraiser in California on Tuesday night, referred back to January and February’s two-week overflight of what the U.S. says was a Chinese spy balloon. The balloon’s surprise appearance over U.S. skies roiled relations and transfixed the American public.

Speaking to wealthy donors at the event for his 2024 reelection campaign, Biden depicted Xi as out-of-touch and embarrassed by the incident, which ended with the Air Force shooting down the balloon just off the East Coast.

“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there,” Biden told the crowd.

“No, I’m serious,” he added. “That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened.“

Biden also played down trade competition from China, which is the world’s second-biggest economy after the United States but struggling to emerge from COVID-era financial troubles.

“By the way, I promise you, don’t worry about China. Worry about China but don’t worry about China,” Biden said. “I really mean it. China has real economic difficulties.”

Biden’s remarks came hours after his secretary of state, in an interview with MSNBC, had called for the two countries to put the balloon incident behind them, saying it was a chapter that “should be closed.”

In Beijing on Wednesday, Mao told reporters that Biden’s remarks “go totally against facts and seriously violate diplomatic protocol, and severely infringe on China’s political dignity.”

“It is a blatant political provocation,” Mao said.

Mao also reiterated China’s version of the balloon episode, saying the balloon was for meteorological research and had been accidentally blown off course.

Administration officials signaled Wednesday that Biden had no intention of walking back his comments.

Biden and Blinken have made clear “we will continue to responsibly manage this relationship, maintain open lines of communication with the PRC,” Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, told reporters, using an abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China.

“But that, of course, does not mean we will not be blunt and forthright about our differences,” including differences on the global competition between democracies and autocracies, Patel said.

U.S.-China tensions have mounted for years as rivalry builds over trade and global influence. Repeated flare-ups have helped escalate the tensions, including over the balloon, U.S. tariffs, sanctions on China, and self-ruled Taiwan.

The U.S. is pressing China to embrace direct communications between Biden, Xi and other senior U.S. and Chinese military and civilian leaders, as a channel to defuse tensions and keep incidents from escalating into open hostilities.

Despite the administration’s diplomatic efforts to soothe relations, analysts point to the Republican political pressure, and note Biden regularly seems to go off-script to criticize Xi.

Bonnie Glaser, Asia director of the George Marshall Fund of the United States, pointed Wednesday to Biden’s state of the union address in February, soon after the balloon flight, as Republican lawmakers in the audience heckled him over China and other issues. Waving a finger in the air, Biden cried out, “Name me a world leader who’d change places with Xi Jinping! Name me one! Name me one!”

For Biden, “he’s under a lot of criticism from the right. He doesn’t want to be seen as soft on China. He views Xi Jinping as a dictator,” Glaser said.

“And he’s not very good ... at differentiating what should be said in public and what should be said in private,” Glaser said. “And the relationship pays a price for it. There’s no doubt about it.”

Xi was likely upset by the claim that he hadn’t been fully informed about the balloon incident, said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the London University School of Oriental and African Studies and a longtime observer of Chinese politics.

“My sense is that Xi may not want to overreact and put the relationship back on ice again,” Tsang said in an email.

The initial Republican response to Biden’s remarks was approving. “It’s an appropriate description of their system of government,” Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said.

While Xi heads a country formally named the People’s Republic of China, he faces no limits on his terms as head of state, commander of the military and leader of the ruling Communist Party, which brooks no challenges to its authority.

In California, Biden had told donors that Xi “wants to have a relationship again.”

Blinken “went over there ... did a good job, and it’s going to take time,” he said.