Had Donald Trump been the U.S. president hosting this week’s APEC meetings, I have no doubt that the headline from the event would have been unchanged. It would have been: “He’s a dictator.”
The only difference is it would be Xi Jinping who was saying it to describe Trump.
Other than that, though, a Trump-hosted APEC meeting would likely have been unrecognizably different from the successful and productive forum hosted by President Joe Biden.
And if he said “well there are lots of different types of governments and we can all work together” or some non answer then the headlines would be “biden refuses to call him a dictator”. It’s a no win so the best course was to say it and smooth it over later because maybe it signals they can both be truthful.
Lots of good came out of this meeting overall in my opinion.