U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded a long-anticipated visit to China on Monday, holding a sit-down meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping after two days of talks with other senior officials. The visit was an attempt to repair the deteriorating relationship between the two countries, which Blinken called "one of the most consequential in the world."

Why was Blinken's trip to China a big deal?

Blinken is the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit China since 2018. He was scheduled to go in February but his trip was abruptly postponed after the U.S. military shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States. 

His meeting with Xi was only confirmed by the U.S. State Department shortly before it took place.

Over the last few years, relations between the U.S. and China have deteriorated significantly, plummeting to a "low point," in the words of one senior Chinese official. The bilateral ties have been battered due to, among other things, what the U.S. and its allies see as Chinese provocations in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, as well as China's support for Russia amid Vladimir Putin's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

"It was clear coming in that the relationship was at a point of instability, and both sides recognized the need to work to stabilize it," Blinken said at a news conference Monday after his meetings.

"A real conversation, a productive exchange"

Blinken said he'd traveled to China to "strengthen high-level challenges of communication, to make clear our positions and intentions in areas of disagreement, and to explore areas where we might work together when our interests align on shared transnational challenges. And we did all of that."

He said he had an "important" conversation with Xi on Monday. 

Xi said the two sides had "agreed to follow through on the common understandings" reached by himself and President Biden on the sidelines of a summit last year in Bali, and made progress on other issues. 

"This is very good," the Chinese leader said.

Earlier, Blinken met with other Chinese officials, Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, and State Councillor Qin Gang. According to a Chinese government readout, Qin said that coming into the talks, the relationship between the U.S. and China was "at the lowest point since its establishment."

"This does not serve the fundamental interests of the two peoples or meet the shared expectations of the international community," the Chinese readout of that meeting said.

But after speaking for over five hours, both sides had more positive things to say.

"This was a real conversation, a productive exchange," a senior State Department official said.

The Chinese readout of the meeting said the talks were "candid, in-depth, and constructive."

The U.S. readout used similar language, adding that Blinken had "emphasized the importance of diplomacy and maintaining open channels of communication across the full range of issues to reduce the risk of misperception and miscalculation."

"Both sides agreed to keep moving forward consultations on the guiding principles of China-U.S. relations," the Chinese readout said.

Taiwan

One of the issues contributing to the deterioration of U.S.-Chinese relations has been Taiwan, a democratically self-governing island about 100 miles off the east coast of mainland China. Taiwan has functioned for decades as a multi-party democracy, but China considers it part of its territory. 

Xi has made "reunification" one of his core goals, and has said China is willing to assert control over Taiwan by force if necessary.

The United States has long employed a policy of "strategic ambiguity" over Taiwan, declining to explicitly state how Washington would respond to a Chinese invasion of the island. Remarks by President Biden last year seemed to call that policy into question, but the White House later clarified that U.S. stance had not changed, and Blinken stressed on Monday Washington's commitment to the "longstanding U.S. 'one China' policy."

"That policy has not changed," he said, stressing that the U.S. did "not support Taiwan independence," though it remains committed to ensuring Taiwan has the ability to defend itself from any attack.

After Blinken met China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, for about three hours on Monday, the Chinese government released a statement saying Wang had told his U.S. counterpart that "China has no room to compromise or concede" on Taiwan.

He said the U.S. must "respect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and clearly oppose 'Taiwan independence."

Ukraine and Russia

China's officially-neutral stance on its ally Russia's war in Ukraine has been another key point of contention with Washington. Top U.S. officials, including Blinken, voiced concern late last year that Beijing could decide to provide lethal military aid to support Vladimr Putin's invasion.

Blinken noted on Monday that China had previously committed to not providing lethal aid to Russia for use in Ukraine, and he said the U.S. had "not seen anything right now to contradict that."

Military-to-military communications

Direct lines of communication between U.S. and Chinese military commanders — a key point of contact in the view of American officials when it comes to easing sudden, tense situations that could snowball into global crises — have been all but severed for some time. 

The issue was highlighted early this year during the spy balloon incident, when U.S. officials said Chinese counterparts simply declined to answer calls to dedicated crisis phone lines.

Given the tension around Taiwan and in the South China Sea, where the two countries routinely fly and sail military hardware in close proximity to one another, the U.S. has been trying hard to reestablish these emergency lines of communication that connect front-line commanders.

Blinken said he'd raised the issue of direct military-to-military communications multiple times during his visit to Beijing, but "at this moment, China has not agreed to move forward with that."

"It is very important that we restore those channels," he said. "If we agree that we have a responsibility to manage this relationship responsibly, if we agree that it's in our mutual interests to make sure that the competitive aspects of the relationship don't veer into conflict, then surely we can agree and see the need for making sure that the channels of communication that we've both said are necessary to do that include military-to-military channels."

He called the conversations with China regarding the reestablishment of those channels a "work in progress." 

In:
• Taiwan
• Antony Blinken
• Xi Jinping
• Ukraine
• Russia
• China

Haley Ott

Haley Ott is an international reporter for CBS News based in London.

Twitter