Antony Blinken appeared to react with a visible flinch and a disapproving shake of the head as Joe Biden described Xi Jinping as a “dictator”.
The US president made the off-the-cuff remark on Wednesday soon after a rare summit with the Chinese president on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meet in San Fransisco.
“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,” Mr Biden said responding to a question from reporters.
China’s foreign ministry described the comments as “wrong and irresponsible”.
“It should be pointed out that there will always be some people with ulterior motives who attempt to incite and damage US-China relations, they are doomed to fail,” Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Chinese foreign minister, said on Thursday.