Chinese leader Xi Jinping told the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe he probably wouldn’t have joined the Communist Party if he’d been born in the U.S., but would have been a member of the Democratic or Republican parties.

"In other words, he didn’t see any point in a party that doesn’t wield political power,” Abe is cited as saying in a memoir released Wednesday in Japan, seven months after the former Japanese leader was fatally shot on the campaign trail.

The book, based on interviews with Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, relates details of his interactions with other global leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin — described as "surprisingly friendly” and fond of dark humor. Former U.S. President Donald Trump is portrayed as inclined to make long phone calls, mostly about golf.

Abe stepped down in 2020 amid criticism of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, blaming a recurrence of a chronic digestive problem. Current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida previously served as Abe’s foreign minister and many of his policies are seen as a continuation of his former boss’s legacy.

The book details a number of claims, including that Xi appeared to be reading out prepared scripts in his early meetings with Abe, but from about 2018 gained confidence and started to speak more freely.

It claims that Trump used to call Abe to consult about policy, with the calls lasting an hour or more and wandering off topic, something Abe found tiring. The prime minister found himself having to change the subject back to diplomatic issues.

In one call after Abe announced his resignation, Trump said he may have conceded too much to Abe in trade talks, the book says.

Most U.S. presidents see themselves as "the leader of the Western world,” but Trump complained about having to bear the burden of the West and didn’t think in terms of a divide between free and authoritarian countries, Abe said. "He didn’t really have the concept of the U.S. bringing the West together to change the behavior of China and Russia.”

Former U.S. President Barack Obama, meanwhile, "only talked about work,” and never indulged in chitchat, Abe said. As a former lawyer, he was also detail-oriented. "To be honest, he was a difficult type for me to build friendly relations with. But there was no problem working with him.”

Abe accused former South Korean President Moon Jae-in of wanting to use anti-Japanese feeling to buoy his administration as tensions flared over whether Japan had sufficiently compensated Seoul for its past colonization.

Aides who had worked at Japan’s trade ministry took the initiative on restricting semiconductor-related exports to South Korea. "I said it’s natural to manage trade with countries that can’t keep international agreements,” Abe said, adding he had deliberately linked the issue to the dispute over compensation.

The former leader said he told former German Chancellor Angela Merkel he didn’t want to sanction Russia over its 2014 invasion of Crimea, because he wanted to prioritize talks over territory disputed between Tokyo and Moscow.