JAKARTA, Indonesia — The top diplomats of the world’s two biggest economies, the United States and China, held talks here Thursday in the latest in a series of efforts to manage a burgeoning rivalry that has reached dramatic new heights in recent years.

The meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, amid reports of a Chinese cyberespionage effort targeting U.S. government email accounts, has raised questions about a fragile thaw in relations between the two countries.

The more than 90-minute conversation continued a flurry of high-level contacts between the United States and China that began last month with a trip by Blinken to Beijing, the first such visit by a U.S. secretary of state in five years.

The meeting “was part of ongoing efforts to maintain open channels of communication to clarify U.S. interests across a wide range of issues and to responsibly manage competition by reducing the risk of misperception and miscalculation,” the State Department said in a statement.

Thursday’s conversation did not lead to any breakthroughs, but U.S. diplomats who participated said the talks were deeper and more substantive than the ones in Beijing last month – precisely the point, they said, of having ongoing exchanges that build rapport between the two sides.

One particular area of focus is fentanyl. Blinken has pushed his Chinese counterparts especially hard to address U.S. concerns about cracking down on the production of “precursor chemicals” that are helping to feed the U.S. opioid epidemic.

“It’s a little more detailed and specific exchange of ‘Here’s where we’ve identified these potential areas – how are we going to get to where either side wants to get on this particular area?'” said a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about the closed-door discussion.

The intrusion by Chinese hackers into email accounts at the State Department and other agencies – including that of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo – was discovered around the time of Blinken’s visit, officials said.

The Biden administration has said it is seeking to “put a floor” under relations with Beijing to prevent further deterioration. In Beijing last month, Wang told Blinken the two sides must “make a choice between dialogue or confrontation” to reverse “the downward spiral of Sino-U.S. relations.”

Those relations took a nosedive last August after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., visited self-governing Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory. In February, exchanges between the two sides ground to a near-standstill when a Chinese spy balloon was discovered floating across the United States.

Blinken’s visit to Beijing last month, which included a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, paved the way for conversations to resume. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen made a highly anticipated trip to China last week. Climate envoy John F. Kerry is set to visit on Sunday, and Raimondo is expected to follow in the coming months.

Officials said they expected the pace of visits to continue, including Chinese policymakers visiting the United States.

Biden administration officials say they see a brief window to build out a relationship that has declined over years of disagreements on fundamental issues like trade and Taiwan, compounded by isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. As Democrats and Republicans alike compete to project a tough-on-China image in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election, the hope is that exchanges now may bolster trust during future rough patches.

Those could be especially critical amid increasingly confrontational behavior by the Chinese military. U.S. officials have sought a permanent military-to-military channel to make sure the two superpowers can ward off miscommunication and reduce the risk of war. So far, Beijing has rebuffed them, and U.S. diplomats on Thursday said no progress was made in Jakarta.

Potential threats posed by China have started to seep into global security arrangements that long focused on other sources of trouble. Blinken went to Jakarta straight from a two-day NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where alliance leaders approved a communiqué filled with references to China as a security threat – a decision that would once have been unthinkable.

Just a few years ago, even mentioning China was taboo at the alliance, which has historically focused on challenges from the Kremlin.

The Chinese “noted the communiqué,” the senior official said. “The secretary made clear that these are not U.S. views. These are views that were expressed by 31 NATO allies in response to Chinese actions.”

Though Blinken’s Beijing trip laid the foundation for further conversations, speed bumps almost immediately reappeared in the relationship. At a private campaign event just days later, President Biden referred to Xi as a “dictator” who was unaware of the spy balloon – a double slap to Chinese sensitivities.

Earlier this month, Beijing stepped up tensions over semiconductors by announcing that exports of gallium and germanium – essential metals used in electric vehicles, fiber-optic cables, and other technology – would be subject to its approval starting in August.

Wang is attending the summit in Jakarta in place of Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who has not been seen in public since June 25. The Foreign Ministry said Wang, who as the foreign policy chief for the Chinese Communist Party ranks above Qin, was filling in for health reasons.

The day before he met with Blinken, Wang met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi in Jakarta. U.S. diplomats said they repeated their push to have China engage in a constructive manner to quell Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We’ve indicated as well that we think China has an obligation and another potential opportunity to play a constructive role here,” the senior official said.

 

Tobin reported from Taipei. The Washington Post’s Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.

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