President Xi Jinping warned America’s top diplomat that the U.S. shouldn’t target or oppose China, as the world’s largest economies wrapped two days of talks spanning thorny disputes on trade and Beijing’s support for Russia’s war machine.

The Chinese leader met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing on Friday afternoon, as the two superpowers continued dialogue to manage a growing list of differences. While the substance of talks was confrontational, both sides refrained from the sharpest rhetoric. They also announced a new working group on artificial intelligence to start in the coming weeks, bolstering expectations for keeping ties steady.

“China and the United States should be partners rather than rivals,” Xi told Blinken, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement. The two sides should “seek common ground and reserve differences, rather than engage in vicious competition,” he added.

Blinken’s harshest criticisms were reserved for Beijing’s support of Russian aggression in Ukraine. China is the top supplier of military machine tools and a compound used in munitions and rocket propellant, he said. “Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support,” he added, noting that the U.S. was ready to impose additional sanctions on Chinese firms.

Since Blinken last visited Beijing 10 months ago at what he called a time of “profound tensions” — after the U.S. shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon — leaders of both nations have pledged to keep ties on a more secure footing. An American election campaign, in which Beijing is a top target on all sides of the ballot, is now adding fresh volatility to the relationship.

President Joe Biden signed a law that could expel TikTok — owned by China—based ByteDance Ltd. — from the U.S. as Blinken headed to China, days after vowing new tariffs on the Asian nation. The U.S. leader has also imposed a slew of trade curbs to block Beijing’s access to advanced chips citing national security concerns.

Blinken signaled more trade tensions ahead, emphasizing that the issue of Chinese manufacturing overcapacity was now “front and center” of the relationship. “This is a movie that we’ve seen before and we know how it ends — with American businesses shuttered and American jobs lost,” he said.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi accused the U.S. of taking “endless measures to suppress China’s economy,” during five-and-a-half hours of talks with Blinken, which included a working lunch. “This is not fair competition, but containment — and it is not removing risks, but creating risks,” he added, noting while things were broadly stable “negative factors” in the relationship were rising.

Diplomatic visits between the two rivals are becoming “Trojan horses” to emphasize differences, according to Josef Gregory Mahoney, a professor of international relations at Shanghai’s East China Normal University.

“This appears to be what the U.S. has in mind with guardrails,” he added. “It helps stabilize relations and to prevent the sort of dangerous tipping points experienced last year while still marching toward a Cold War paradigm.”

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