US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the United States and China had made "progress" toward steering relations back on track as both sides agreed on the need to "stabilize" the bilateral relationship between the two superpowers, reports CNN.

After two days of meetings in Beijing with top officials including President Xi Jinping, Mr Blinken said that there are key issues between the nations that remain unresolved, but noted that his "hope and expectation is we will have better communications, better engagement going forward."

Mr Blinken is the first US secretary of state to visit Beijing in five years, and his talks with senior Chinese officials were seen as a key litmus test for whether the two governments could stop relations from continuing to plummet at a time of lingering distrust.

"It was clear coming in that the relationship was at a point of instability," Mr Blinken said at a news conference in the Chinese capital Monday. "And both sides recognized the need to work to stabilize it."

"I came to Beijing to strengthen high-level channels of communication, to make clear our positions and intentions in areas of disagreement, and to explore areas where we might work together on our interests, align on shared transnational challenges, and we did all of that," he said.

"We're not going to have success on every issue between us on any given day, but in a whole variety of areas, on the terms that we set for this trip, we have made progress and we are moving forward," he said.

One of the key issues that did not get resolved was that of restoring military-to-military communications between the US and China. Contacts between the country's top military officials remain frozen, and two recent incidents have raised concerns that the fraught relationship could veer into conflict.

"The world needs an overall stable Sino-US relationship, and whether China and the United States can get along has a bearing on the future and destiny of mankind," President Xi told Mr Blinken, according to a Chinese readout of the meeting.

"China respects the interests of the United States and will not challenge or replace the United States. Similarly, the United States must also respect China and not harm China's legitimate rights and interests," Xi added. The readout said that Mr Xi told Mr Blinken that the world needs stable China-US relations and that the future of humanity hinges on both getting along.

The two global powers have been increasingly at loggerheads over a host of issues ranging from Beijing's close ties with Moscow to American efforts to limit the sale of advanced technologies to China.