Secretary of State Antony Blinken spent two long days in China last weekend, meeting with various Chinese officials (including President Xi Jinping) to arrest the downward spiral in U.S.-China relations. He did as well as anybody could have expected in the circumstances. While Blinken was unable to convince Beijing to reopen channels of communication on military matters, he left with at least some confidence that the Chinese were as interested in stabilizing ties as the Americans were.

President Joe Biden just made that job more difficult. It took less than two days for the president to put the entire mini-detente in jeopardy. During a fundraiser in California, Biden yet again talked about the spy balloon episode from February, and he surmised that Xi was embarrassed about the entire affair because he didn’t have a clue about what was going on.

BIDEN'S CLIMATE AGENDA DREAMS COLLIDE WITH MILITARY REALITIES

"The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset, in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment in it, was he didn't know it was there," Biden said. "That's a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn't know what happened."

China, predictably, condemned Biden’s remarks in strong terms. China's foreign ministry referred to Biden’s rhetoric as “extremely absurd and irresponsible” and contrary to the facts. Biden’s advisers tried to explain his remarks further on Wednesday afternoon, reiterating the president’s belief in diplomacy. This certainly isn’t the first time U.S. officials have had to perform cleanup duty after a presidential statement — Biden has repeatedly declared that the United States would defend Taiwan militarily if China invaded the island.

We can chalk up the ad-libbing as another instance of Biden being Biden — a man who tends to say things at the worst possible time. Others won’t take issue with it. It’s not like branding Xi as a dictator doesn’t have merit. But why Biden did what he did isn’t important. The fact is that he did it, and now, his subordinates will have to try to find a way to manage the consequences.

Blinken is a loyal foot soldier, having served Biden as a senior foreign policy adviser for two decades. He carries out the president’s wishes without question and, as one might expect, fully buys into the administration’s foreign policy. But one has a tough time believing Blinken isn’t a little frustrated by his boss’s propensity to say things off the cuff. I don’t sympathize with Blinken very often, but this is an exception. In the span of a minute, whatever small signs of progress he made during his trip to China had been compromised.

This must be doubly annoying for Blinken because he was explicitly tasked with trying to get U.S.-China relations back on a stable foundation. The White House has stressed the importance of dialogue and lines of communication with Beijing at every opportunity. Unfortunately, Biden’s rhetoric does nothing to make that flank of the policy any easier to operationalize. If anything, it feeds into China’s suspicions that U.S. entreaties are nothing but a highly orchestrated public relations campaign meant to show the world that Beijing, not Washington, is the one standing in the way of a more constructive relationship.

U.S.-China relations over the last year have been a roller-coaster ride. Every time there is some sign of improvement, one or both sides commit a self-inflicted wound that brings relations back to where they were. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August, a purely symbolic nothingburger meant to buttress her legacy, plunged the U.S.-China relationship into a dark place. The two nations are still trying to move past it.

Blinken and Xi’s summit in Bali last November was designed to turn a new chapter, but China’s spy balloon nearly three months later, and the subsequent hyperventilating about it among politicians in both parties, put a big, damp blanket over sparks of progress. Then, of course, came Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in California, another wholly unnecessary provocation in Beijing’s eyes.

In the past, the Biden administration could plausibly fault China for refusing to act responsibly. Now, the administration is in the awkward position of explaining why the boss shouldn’t be faulted for doing the same thing.

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Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.