U.S. senior officials caught off-guard by Biden's calling Xi a 'dictator'

For now, administration officials said they hope that this controversy passes quickly and that Beijing’s economic concerns don’t allow it to derail plans for visits from the U.S. treasury and commerce secretaries.

But the person who may have been surprised the least by Biden's comments was Xi himself, said Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow for the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for New American Security, a Washington think tank.

“Xi knows how President Biden feels about him,” said Stokes, who was an adviser to Biden on Asia policy when he was vice president. “There’s some crocodile tears about this comment from China.”

Read the full story and more from NBC News.