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.”
A few things:
Democratic Socialism isn’t necessarily the only democratic form of Socialism. DemSoc refers to a Socialist system with Liberal Democracy, as opposed to forms like ParEcon, Council Communism, Syndicalism, Soviet Democracy, etc.
Secondly, technically China subscribes to a form of Democracy, based on the concept of Democratic Centralism.
I personally don’t think the US or China is actually very Democratic, neither are truly accountable to the will of the people. The US is slightly more democratic, but it isn’t saying much.