(Bloomberg) -- Beijing lashed out at President Joe Biden for saying Chinese leader Xi Jinping faces "enormous problems," underscoring the renewed tensions between the two nations since the US downing of a balloon in its airspace.
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"The US remarks are highly irresponsible and violate basic diplomatic protocols," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Thursday at a regular press briefing in Beijing when asked about Biden's comments in an interview with PBS Newshour.
"We are firmly opposed to that and condemn that," Mao said.
In the interview on Wednesday, Biden repeated comments he made in his State of the Union address that no world leader would want to trade places with Xi. Then he told interviewer Judy Woodruff that "this man has enormous problems."
Biden said Xi has "great potential" but had "an economy that's not functioning very well." The US president also suggested Beijing's ties with Moscow were a burden because of the war. "Everybody assumed that China would be all in with Russia and Ukraine. But they're not all in it."
Also: China Balloon Was Part of a Global Spying Effort, Blinken Says
Biden also denied that relations with Beijing have suffered a serious blow after the US downed what it said was a Chinese spy balloon that flew across the continental US. Mao hit back at an assertion by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the high-altitude device was part of a years-long, global surveillance program run by Beijing.
She said she wasn't aware of the specifics of Blinken's claim, "but I think this may be part of the information warfare waged by the US against China. The international community knows clearly who the No. 1 spying and surveillance empire is."
The aircraft was for civilian purposes, Mao reiterated, and strayed into the US due to weather conditions. Beijing has said the aircraft was a civilian climate research vehicle.
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