In San Francisco, a carefully choreographed reset of the rocky US. China relationship. U. S. President Joe Biden, chinese President Xi Jinping a meeting months in the making, 4 hours of talks, meticulously planned photo ops, all seemingly going according to plan until President Biden seemed to go off script.

Mr. President aft, you still refer to President Xi as a dictator. This is a term that you used earlier this year.

Well, look, he is I mean, he's a dictator in the sense that he is the guy who runs a country that is based on former government totally different than ours.

Biden's off the cuff answer to a question from White House correspondent M. J. Lee, drawing a cringeworthy reaction from U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a swift, sharp response from China's foreign ministry.

This is extremely erroneous. It is an irresponsible political maneuver which China firmly opposes.

Beijing had a similar reply back in June when Biden called his Chinese counterpart a dictator at a California fundraiser on the streets of Beijing. This man seems to agree with Biden's description. One party system, to be honest and open, that is a dictatorship. Something he says keeps China stable, putting a positive spin on Biden's definition of the word. Beijing's communist rulers have long argued stability makes their system superior to western democracies. They never, ever use the word dictator. Neither does Chinese state media, ignoring Biden's controversial comment even as it made headlines around the world, instead focusing on President Xi's personal diplomacy with the US. President. Like the moment they compared armored limousines.

It's like that Cadillac we have over there. They call it the beast.

On China's heavily censored social media, not a single mention of the outrage over Biden. Using the D word for the second time in six months, the Chinese government takes that word very personally, blasting Germany's foreign minister for similar comments in September.

What sign would that be for others? Dictators in the world like Xi?

He wouldn't be the first to fend off that label. Listen to this exchange on 60 minutes between Mike Wallace and Xi's predecessor, Zhang Zimin. You are the last major communist dictatorship in the world.

You mean I am dictatorship.

Am I wrong?

Of course. This is big mystic.

As for President Xi, the communist leader who eliminated term limits and some say his rivals, paving the way for a lifetime in power, we don't know how he feels about Biden's remark. Unlike the US. President, Xi never has to answer unscripted questions.

His diplomats spent months controlling every detail, from the venue to the food to the flowers at this meeting with President Biden. So it's certainly no surprise that right now they are cutting off our signal inside China. This is a live picture from Beijing. They certainly don't want the Chinese people to know about the dictator comment. They don't want to see our coverage of this right now. Aaron, this has happened before. It happens quite a lot on this program. One barometer, perhaps, of how this actually went might be whether president Xi follows through on a comment he made yesterday when he said that the resumption of panda diplomacy is on the table. China hasn't granted any new panda loans to the US. For some 20 years. That might be changing. We'll see if it's still in the offer still in place after that remark.

By the president, we certainly will. And, of course, that response by the secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, well, it was the look that said a thousand words. All right, well, Ripley, thank you very much. And I want to go now to Sarah Landy. She has had an unexpected quarter century long friendship with the Chinese president Xi Jinping. They first met in 1985. There they are. Landy was hosting a dinner at her home in Iowa, and she had a green bean casserole with Xi Jinping. Now, she at the time was 31 years old. He was a rising political star in the communist party, and he went to Iowa to see how Americans farmed. Landy was the head of a volunteer organization called sister states, which had been just founded that year to connect Iowans to the rest of the world. And after that meeting, landy made several trips to China over the years. She came back to visit Landy again. That was in 2012. We got a picture of them together right after he became president of China. And they were together again last night and had a private meeting. So Sarah Landy joins me now.

And, Sarah, I mean, I think it is incredible for anyone watching and you try to look at someone of such consequence in the world with so much power that you would know someone like this over so many years, so well, 40 years nearly, you have known him. How do you square words like dictator with the man that you have come to know through your lifetime?

Well, one thing is, I think it's too bad that one word throws people think. You know, in China, there is one person that makes most of decisions. It's Xi Jinping. I don't know that I'd call him a dictator, but he definitely is in charge. That's how they keep order there. But I think many other things we should focus on besides somebody calling a dictator. I don't know. How do you define a dictator? He believes he needs to keep control over lots of his people in order to keep the peace and security and bring them up as equal. It's not the way we believe in the United States. I don't know what you call it, but you wouldn't call it free reign democracy because he does not believe that's the best for his country. So other than squibbling over the name dictator, let's look at what they did talk about. Let's talk about what they did decide maybe to have more airlines going back and forth, maybe more people to people exchanges, having teams look into Fentanyl and all the other things they're going. So I think there are lots of other ways we should look into this conversation, rather than being mad that somebody's called someone a dictator.

Calling names doesn't work, but it doesn't tell the story.