(Reuters) – Billionaire investor Ray Dalio, who founded the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, said on social media on Sunday he wanted to “clarify” comments he made last week in which he appeared to brush off human-rights abuses in China.

He said he “sloppily answered” a question during a CNBC interview, adding that he “didn’t mean to convey that human rights aren’t important.”

“I am an American who has lived my whole life in the U.S., experiencing the American Dream, and I believe in our system. At the same time, I have spent more than half my life in contact with China which has helped me understand their system as well,” he said in some tweets and a Linkedin post.

Dalio described China as a “strict parent”, when being asked last week about dissident disappearances.