Argentina's president made an extremely offensive joke while meeting China's president

Argentina's President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, is making fun of Chinese accents on Twitter while on official business in the country. In a tweet on Wednesday, first reported by Bloomberg, she wrote about her trip, replacing "r"s with "l"s in the words arroz (rice) and petróleo (petroleum).

Translation: "Sorry. You know what? It's just that the ridiculousness and absurdity is so high, that it can only be understood through humor. If not, it's very, very toxic."

The problem with this - beyond that it's incredibly insulting to the Chinese - is that it's bad for Argentina's economy.

Fernandez needs China. Badly. Since last year, Fernandez has been working with Xi on currency swap to get cash to her country and replenish Argentina's notoriously low cash reserves.

Last fall reserves hit their lowest level in some time at around $22 billion. The country's exports, mostly commodities, are really cheap and its balance of payments is off. Meanwhile, because of outstanding debt and legal issues (mostly with American hedge fund manager Paul Singer) it's tough for Argentina to raise money in international financial markets.

Between October and December Argentina received about $2.3 billion from China, but conditions for commodities and for the country are not improving. The country will need more.

Now is not the time to make Xi angry.