U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, as the top U.S. diplomat wraps up his rare two-day visit to Beijing amid simmering U.S.-China tensions.

Blinken’s meeting with Xi got underway shortly after 4:30 p.m. local time (4:30 a.m. ET), Chinese state media Xinhua reported.

The trip by Blinken makes him the highest-level American official to visit China since Joe Biden became U.S. president and the first U.S. secretary of State to make the trip in nearly five years. A meeting with Xi had not been confirmed before Blinken arrived in Beijing, and will likely be seen as a positive sign that talks are going well.

It is expected that Blinken’s visit to China could pave the way for a November meeting between Biden and Xi. The two world leaders last met in person in Bali, Indonesia, on the sidelines of a G20 summit late last year.

Earlier, Blinken met top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi on Monday, after “candid, substantive, and constructive talks” with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Sunday.

The meeting was expected to touch on a range of issues, including the importance of open lines of communication, Taiwan, the South China Sea and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Blinken “underscored the importance of responsibly managing the competition between the United States and the PRC through open channels of communication to ensure competition does not veer into conflict,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

The secretary also “reiterated that the United States will continue to use diplomacy to raise areas of concern and stand up for the interests and values of the American people.”

Wang stressed that the Blinken visit came at a critical juncture in Sino-U.S. relations, in a statement released by the Chinese foreign ministry translated via Google. He said both parties must choose between cooperation and conflict, adding that the difficulties in the countries’ ties are rooted in the U.S.′ “erroneous perception of China, which leads to wrong policies towards China.”

Wang further urged Washington to give up its so-called “China threat theory,” to lift sanctions against Beijing and to no longer suppress China’s technological development.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wang’s characterization of the nature of U.S.-China difficulties.