US-China relations: Beyond the 'Cold War' cliche

The meeting between senior Biden administration officials and their Chinese counterparts marks the first face-to-face opportunity to gauge the dynamics of the relationship between the two most important global powers.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Alaska on Thursday.

There are no illusions in the Biden team. Ahead of the meeting Mr Blinken noted this was "not a strategic dialogue" and there was "no intent at this point for a series of follow-on engagements".

"These engagements," he noted, "if they are to follow, really have to be based on the proposition that we're seeing tangible progress and tangible outcomes on the issues of concern to us with China."

Relations between the US and China are the worst they have been for many years and look set to become worse still. Well before his appointment Mr Sullivan, co-authored an article in Foreign Affairs magazine with Mr Biden's top Asia adviser - Kurt Campbell - which bluntly stated that "the era of engagement with China has come to an unceremonious close".

It has become commonplace to describe the US-China relationship as a new "Cold War", a reference to the generation-long rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union that cast a shadow over the latter half of the 20th Century.