welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world, i m christine romans. secretary of state antony blinken meeting face-to-face right now with chinese president xi jinping in beijing. the high stakes one-on-one is part of blinken s efforts to meet with china s top diplomat. an effort to lower the temperature amid rising tensions between the u.s. and china. cnn s kylie atwood in beijing this morning. just the fact that their meeting is a huge meeting, kylie, we learned 90 minutes ago their meeting was a go. what do we know about it? reporter: that s right, it s here in beijing, the secretary of state who is the first cabinet member to visit china from biden administration in 2 1/2 years. sitting down with president xi, we don t know much about the meeting because it s so ongoing. here s what we do know, there have been a number of hours that the secretary has engaged with
that we could get along. reporter: now, jake, it does appear that blinken s visit here to beijing is serving a somewhat of a spring board for further face-to-face engagement between u.s. and chinese officials with the secretary saying that in the coming weeks biden administration officials are also expected to visit beijing. we know that the administration had been looking at visits for the secretary of commerce, the secretary of treasury, the climate envoy, and we ll see if those get scheduled. but china does have a vested interest in engaging with the united states when it comes to economic and trade issues. the two economies are intertwined and china s post covid economic recovery has faced a slowdown in recent months with youth unemployment in the country reaching an all-time high just in the last month. jake. kylie atwood in beijing, thank you so much. let s bring in retired admiral mike mullen, former