President Joe Biden said he hopes to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping within the next few months and suggested China’s leaders weren’t aware of details surrounding an alleged spy balloon the U.S. shot down in February.
“China has some legitimate difficulties unrelated to the United States,” Biden told reporters on Saturday. “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.”
“I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional,” he said before boarding Air Force One to Philadelphia for a speech to kick off his 2024 reelection campaign. Biden said he’s “hoping that over the next several months I’ll be meeting Xi again.”
Biden’s comments coincide with a trip by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing to meet senior Chinese officials in an attempt to lower tension and avoid outright conflict between the world’s two biggest economies. Blinken’s original trip was postponed after the uproar over the balloon, which crossed the U.S. from west to east before being shot down by a fighter jet off the South Carolina coast.
Biden and Xi met in Bali, Indonesia last November.
Asked about President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Russia has delivered its first tactical nuclear weapons to neighboring Belarus, Biden reiterated that he views the move as “totally irresponsible.”
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(With assistance from Alicia Diaz.)
