US President Joe Biden said Wednesday he still believes Chinese President Xi Jinping is a dictator, even as the two leaders made progress in their relationship during a meeting outside San Francisco.
“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 told CNN’s MJ Lee. “Anyway, we made progress.”
When asked about Biden’s latest comment at a Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing on Thursday, a spokesperson called it “extremely erroneous” and an “irresponsible political maneuver, which China firmly opposes.”
Why is that weird? Seems fairly commonplace to me. Like, not that it’s necessarily correct, just not weird at all.
Because it is fundamentally wrong.
Wrong != weird.
Not really. They have a kind of controlled capitalism where they don’t allow the rich to be too greedy or corrupt. The theory is that you can’t go directly from feudalism to communism, you need capitalism first for rapid development.
I think it’s more accurate to say that they don’t allow the rich to be become too powerful, which is very different from allowing them to be overly greedy or corrupt.
For example Jack Ma, he’s no more greedy or corrupt than many other ultra successful Chinese business people and China didn’t care about him until he got too popular and he started speaking negatively about the CCP in public. He was popular, rich, and criticizing the CCP so they took him down.
Ren Zhiqiang is another example. The CCP was fine with him being stupid wealthy and corrupt as hell but then he started getting popular by criticizing the CCP and that they wouldn’t tolerate so “Big Cannon Ren” went to prison.
You don’t need Oligarch status to draw their ire. Remember Peng Shuai? She was popular and became a threat to the CCP after making sexual assault allegations against a high ranking official. They do it to famous people of all types but only after they start criticizing the CCP.
The other way to get in trouble is if your greed and corruption become a threat to the Government. This is why the people behind Evergrande, Country Gardens, Zhongzhi, and other companies got away with INSANE levels of greed and corruption for so long. The CCP knew it was happening and didn’t care until that Greed and Corruption was threatening to topple the economy and thus the CCP itself.
Greed and Corruption? The CCP simply doesn’t care unless it threatens their power.
and what is the destination of late-stage capitalism?
The US president being wrong about something isn’t weird. I wish it were, but it isn’t. 
deleted by creator