Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff seeks more control over postmaster general after mail meltdown
Families of Americans detained in China share their pain and urge US to get them home
A body is found near the site of the deadly interstate shooting in Kentucky
Port strike on US East Coast would spark supply-chain glitches from outset, shipping firm exec says
Veteran CIA officer who drugged and sexually assaulted dozens of women gets 30 years in prison
Fed might have cut rates at July meeting, Powell says
Playtika to acquire Dice Dreams maker SuperPlay
Eli Manning leads group of 1st time nominees for Pro Football Hall of Fame
Brewers outperform preseason expectations again to win third NL Central title in four years
Coco Gauff splits with coach Brad Gilbert after more than a year and one Grand Slam title together
By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason
WOODSIDE, California (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he had not changed his view that Chinese President Xi Jinping was effectively a dictator, a comment likely to land with a thud in Beijing after the two leaders held straightforward summit talks after months of preparation.
Biden held a solo news conference after four hours of talks with Xi on the outskirts of San Francisco. At the end of the news conference, he was asked whether he still held the view that Xi was a dictator, something he said in June.
"Look, he is. He's a dictator in the sense that he's a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that's based on a form of government totally different than ours," Biden said.
Last March Xi clinched a third term as president when nearly 3,000 members of China's rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress, voted unanimously for him in an election in which there was no other candidate.
Xi is considered the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, after a decade of consolidating power in policy-making and the military, and stifling media freedoms.
There was no immediate reaction from the Chinese delegation, which had come to the United States to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco. Hundreds of critics of Beijing marched through the city's downtown around noon, chanting "free Tibet" and "free Hong Kong."
When Biden made a similar dictator reference in June, China called the remarks absurd and a provocation. But the spat did not prevent the two sides from holding extensive talks aimed at improving strained relations, which culminated in Wednesday's meeting.
Still, Biden's opinion of the Communist Party was a topic of the Wednesday meeting. Xi told Biden that the negative views of the Communist Party in the United States were unfair, a U.S. official told reporters after the meeting.
(Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Heather Timmons and Stephen Coates)
