US President Joe Biden said Wednesday he still believes Chinese President Xi Jinping is a dictator, even as the two leaders made progress in their relationship during a meeting outside San Francisco, writes CNN.

“Well, look, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours,” Biden told CNN’s MJ Lee. “Anyway, we made progress.”

The remark is likely to upset Beijing, which responded furiously over the summer when the president made a similar comment.

Biden compared his Chinese counterpart to “dictators” during an off-camera campaign reception in California in June, hitting Xi for being caught by surprise after the US had shot down a Chinese spy balloon that had veered off course over the United States.

“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two boxcars full of spy equipment in it is he didn’t know it was there.

“No, I’m serious. That’s what’s a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened,” Biden said at the time.