Although the two sides are talking to each other again, the "negative factors" in the relationship between the US and China have increased, said China's chief diplomat Wang Yi on Friday in Beijing.

Wang cited China's right to develop being "unreasonably suppressed" as one of the reasons. According to him, the two countries are faced with the question of whether their relationship will either stabilise or slide into a downward spiral.

According to US media reports, Blinken said that progress had been made in some areas to close the gap between the two countries. However, he wanted to express clearly and directly the issues on which there were differences of opinion with China.

In talks on Thursday with the Party Secretary of Shanghai, Chen Jining, Blinken addressed points of difference with China regarding unfair trading practices, US press reports said. During his three-day visit to China Blinken also met students and US business representatives in Shanghai.

After a year of complete radio silence, US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, met in person last November near San Francisco in order to stabilise strained relations.

However, since then, new disputes on political and economic issues have continued to boil over.

China is angry about US sanctions in the tech sector or against Chinese companies supplying componentry, which could be used in Russia's war machine against Ukraine.

Washington is concerned about Chinese influence and recently passed a law to force the Chinese company ByteDance to divest itself of its video-sharing platform TikTok in the US.