BEIJING — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sat down with China’s top diplomat Monday on the final day of a high stakes visit to Beijing aimed at stabilizing relations, which cratered in the wake of a dispute over a Chinese surveillance balloon.

All eyes are on whether Washington’s envoy will meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping later in the day for what could be a crucial step in patching fractured ties.

The global powers are increasingly at loggerheads and there is widespread international interest in whether Blinken’s trip can secure a cooling of tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

Both sides have come into the visit – the first by a US Secretary of State to China in five years – with an expressed goal of course correcting their relationship, which has been deeply strained by a host of issues ranging from Beijing’s close ties with Moscow to American efforts to limit the sale of advanced technologies to China.

The roughly three-hour meeting between Blinken and China’s top foreign affairs adviser Wang Yi, however, underscored the deep challenges in overcoming the mistrust and friction that has come to characterize the relationship.

Repeating Beijing’s typical rhetoric, Wang blamed Washington’s “wrong perception” of China as the “root cause” of the decline in the two sides’ relations and demanded the US stop “suppressing” China and interfering in its internal affairs, according to a readout from Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

“We must reverse the downward spiral of China-US relations, promote a return to a healthy and stable track, and jointly find the right way for China and the United States to co-exist in the new era,” Wang said, adding that Blinken’s visit came at “a critical juncture in US-China relations, where a choice needs to be made between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict.”

Wang also reiterated that Taiwan is one of one of China’s “core interests,” over which it “has no room for compromise or backdown.” The self-ruling democratic island, which China’s ruling Communist Party claims but has never controlled, has increasingly been another flashpoint in the US-China relationship.

The remarks overall took a more combative tone than those of China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who met with Blinken the previous day.

Qin noted that China-US relations were at the “lowest point” since diplomatic ties were re-established in 1979, and, like Wang, “raised clear demands” on US policy toward Taiwan.

But China called the Sunday talks “candid, in-depth and constructive,” in its readout, saying that both sides agreed to “advance dialogue, exchanges and cooperation” and “maintain high-level interactions,” according to a readout from Beijing.

Blinken’s visit has been widely seen as a key test for how far the two powers can go to stabilize their fractured lines of communication, which have broken down over the past year, especially when it comes to high-level military exchanges – raising concerns in Washington that a mistake or accident could quickly spin into conflict.

Whether Blinken also meets with Xi before his departure will be a key indicator of China’s interest in taking steps to rebuild that rapport.

Previous trips by America’s top diplomat have often involved a face-to-face with China’s top leader. Neither side has yet confirmed whether such a meeting will take place.

Blinken’s Sunday meeting with Qin, which stretched more than five hours and then wrapped with a working dinner, resulted in progress “on a number of fronts,” with both sides showing a “desire to reduce tensions,” a senior State Department official told reporters Sunday.

“Profound differences” between the US and China, however, were also clear during the meeting, the official added.

Both the US and China have played down expectations of a major breakthrough during Blinken’s visit.

Ahead of the meeting, Washington was careful to manage expectations, with a senior State Department official last week telling reporters that he does not expect “a long list of deliverables.”

Blinken’s visit was originally scheduled for early February and had been agreed on as a follow-up to an amicable face-to-face between US President Joe Biden and China’s Xi on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali in November.

That meeting – the first in person between the two leaders as presidents – was seen a pivotal step in restoring certain lines of communication, which Beijing severed following a visit last year from then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.

The earlier planned visit by Blinken was postponed after a Chinese surveillance balloon was detected traversing the continental US, further ratcheting tensions between the two powers, even as China issued a rare statement of regret and claimed the incident was an accident. — CNN