US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in-person for the first time in over a year at the APEC summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. According to a White House readout of the meeting, the two discussed several topics including the exporting of fentanyl and reopening a direct line between the two world leaders. After the meeting, Biden described the discussions as "candid" and "straight forward." At a press conference, however, Biden referred to Xi as a dictator, saying "he's a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country..." At a press conference in Beijing on Thursday, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning responded to Biden's comments claiming it was "irresponsible political manipulation."
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Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: President Biden and China's President Xi Jinping meeting for the first time face to face in over a year. This happened just by the APAC summit in San Francisco yesterday. Now, the two leaders spoke for about four hours. Xi walked away from the meeting seemingly optimistic, saying that it is not an option for the two countries to turn their backs on each other. He added, quote, "planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed."
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President Biden called the discussions some of the, quote, "most productive that he's had with Xi." Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
JOE BIDEN: I've been meeting with President Xi since both those for Vice President over 10 years ago. Our meetings have always been candid and straightforward. We haven't always agreed, but they've been straightforward. And today build on the groundwork related with the past several months of high level diplomacy between our teams, we've made some important progress, I believe.
SEANA SMITH: So made some important progress, I think at least at first you would have said that the tone at the meeting was relatively optimistic, maybe a bit warmer than what we have seen in terms of US-China relations in the past. But then there were some comments made by President Biden shortly after those comments were initially taken. And that could have unraveled things maybe any of the progress that was made. And those were the comments that he said in regards to a question about whether or not Xi is a dictator.
And President Biden said, quote, "he's a dictator in the sense that he's the guy who runs a country that is a communist country that's based on a form of government totally different than ours." And I think those comments are what the Street, what traders are latching onto this morning when you see some of the pressure in some of the US-Chinese listed names here throughout the morning.
BRAD SMITH: Yeah, and some of those listed names were in attendance at the meeting yesterday and at this dinner forking up $40,000 just to try and get some of that time and sit at the table with the Chinese President Xi Jinping.
BRIAN SOZZI: They take mine. Didn't take-- I mean, I had the-- I had the paper here. They didn't have it.
BRAD SMITH: Don't worry. Hold it back up. Let the people show.
BRIAN SOZZI: I had it. I was ready to go. I was ready to put it down on that table.
BRAD SMITH: Ready to put it down in cash too. OK. So I'm just going to roll up to President Xi. But at the end of the day, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple who his business-- the greater China business for Apple is actually down year over year. I think it's sitting at about 72.6-- $72.5 billion versus last year, which was just a hair higher than that. But at the same time, all of these companies want to have the ear of the man of the President that ultimately is going to dictate perhaps how their businesses success moves forward in a region that is outside of where their own home-grown name and their brand has evolved from for so many years here.
And so with that being some of their growth strategy, of course, they all wanted to have that in perhaps. But there were some interesting photos taken too along with them.
BRIAN SOZZI: Well, I just have to quickly knowledge, and we're all friends here. I was watching Biden and Xi walk down that path. I wanted to see who was going to win the race, that walking race. I mean, full disclosure, optics matter in these types of meetings. I was just very curious. See. Look. I was actually watching this yesterday.
BRAD SMITH: Do you think they think about that?
BRIAN SOZZI: Absolutely. Most certainly. Absolutely. Optics matter. Was President Biden going to let Xi beat him in this race down the path, it was actually something. And look, right there, you see Xi pulling ahead. And you had the President kind of letting him pull ahead a little bit, maybe trying to cool relations.
BRAD SMITH: But then he put his hips into it and tried to--
BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah. And I think President Biden got--
SEANA SMITH: What was the outcome? Do we know?
BRIAN SOZZI: I think President Biden actually beat him at the finish line. But nonetheless, like you mentioned, Brad, optics matter. And it was also interesting to see a good tweet from a friend of the show Marc Benioff taking an interesting photo with Elon Musk. There he is. A lot of capital tied up in that photo. Of course, Marc Benioff, Salesforce co-founder and CEO, and Elon Musk, who runs what 18 different companies maybe.
SEANA SMITH: Yeah, safe to say that.
BRAD SMITH: Over time, yes.
BRIAN SOZZI: And I think we had Xi with the Golden State Warriors, what, jersey there. So nice swag for Xi Jinping on his way back home.
SEANA SMITH: Well, he's doing everything he can to try to win back some of the foreign investment that has left China.
BRIAN SOZZI: Well, he also lost that race down the path.