At a press conference on Wednesday, November 15, a journalist asked Joe Biden, "Would you still refer to President Xi [Jinping] as a dictator?" Biden's response was: "Look, he is," adding, "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." The American president gave a similar description of his Chinese counterpart last year.

It was clearly not appreciated by the "guy" in Beijing. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the statement "extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation." Was Biden's one little sentence enough to torpedo the outcome of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit held in San Francisco – which had the intention of improving an Asian-American relationship that has deteriorated to its lowest level in 40 years?

In the middle of an election year, the White House's octogenarian president has lived up to his reputation as gaffe-prone. Unless of course, he has put his finger on one of the key problems plaguing the relationship between the world's two leading economies. There's a political-ideological gulf between them, and four hours of conversation in a dreamy villa in Northern California are unlikely to bridge it.

Nevertheless, François Godement, a China specialist at the Institut Montaigne, wrote this week that this summit marks "a pause in the rivalry" between Beijing and Washington. Ministerial exchanges have resumed across all sectors in recent months and the two countries even formed a climate working group before their California lunch. During their meeting in San Francisco, they also decided to restore contact between their militaries, which had been suspended a year prior.

San Fran's 'cool attitude'

The summit's aim was to remedy a situation where there are almost daily incidents, as Chinese and American patrols cross paths in the air and sea space of the Western Pacific. China has agreed to halt exports of the chemical components that are required to manufacture fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States in the past 20 years.

The prevailing tone has changed. There is no longer "wolf warrior diplomacy" on the Chinese side. Suddenly, any lofty speeches about the emergence of a Chinese superpower have been forgotten, along with its aggressive criticism of the crimes committed by the declining West. San Francisco's 'coolness' is in its DNA, and maybe that played a part in talks. But more than California cool, Xi needs Wall Street.

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