He may be the least progressive Democrat running for president, but Mike Bloomberg is continuing to bend over backwards to explain the Communist Party of China as he tries to deflect from his refusal to call the nation’s leader, Xi Jinping, a dictator — saying the Chinese people “don’t seem to want” a democracy.

The former New York mayor appeared on a CNN town hall in South Carolina on Wednesday evening and was asked about the “dictator” remarks he made the night before at the Democratic primary debate, in which he refused to pin that label on Xi.

“Well, it’s a question of what is a dictator. They don’t have a democracy in the sense that they have general elections. That is true. They do have a system where a small group of people appoint the head,” Bloomberg replied. “And they churn over periodically. If you go back and look at the last two or three decades, there have been a number of people that have had the same position that Xi Jinping has.”

He continued by saying that if democracy is an electoral process in which citizens elect their leader, “that is not what China is about, and they don’t seem to want it.”

Bloomberg said he disagrees with the Chinese on that.

“I think they’d be better off opening things up, having freedom of the press, which they don’t have, having lots of different cultures come in. That’s the great strength of America. They don’t seem to think that, and I think we should work as hard as we can to change that,” he said.

Bloomberg explained that China will inevitably “keep growing and becoming stronger” on its current path, and acquiescence is a matter of economic interest.

“You’re not going to go to war and try to force them. It is the second-biggest economic power, and we should get used to the fact that China is going to keep growing and become stronger, and we have to figure out a ways to work with them while protecting our industries and protecting our country militarily,” Bloomberg said.

During Tuesday’s debate, Bloomberg described China’s record on human rights as “abominable” but stopped short of referring to Xi as an autocrat when pressed on doing business with the Communist economic powerhouse of a nation.

“In terms of whether he’s a dictator, he does serve at the behest of the Politburo, of their group of people, but there’s no question he has an enormous amount of power,” Bloomberg said, adding that “you can negotiate with him.”

In 2018, China removed a two-year limit on the presidency, allowing Xi, who came to power in 2012, to effectively become president for life. The Communist Party simultaneously enshrined Xi’s name in the country’s constitution.