The United States and China have agreed in principle that their presidents will hold a virtual meeting before the end of the year, a senior U.S. administration official told journalists on Wednesday.

The announcement from American officials came after a six-hour meeting in the Swiss city of Zurich between U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi.

American officials had sought an in-person meeting. But Mr. Xi has not left Chinese territory for such meetings in nearly two years, and will not be at the Group of 20 summit in Rome this month either, which the Chinese leader usually attends, according to the New York Times. 

The proposed summit is a recognition of the dangers of going an entire year into a new presidential term without a formal meeting between the leaders of the world’s largest and second-largest economies, the New York Times report said. 

U.S. officials had suggested that the meeting was a follow-on from President Joe Biden's Sept. 9 call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, prior to which the world's top two economies were locked in a trade war.

Xi had at the time rejected Biden’s offer of an in-person summit as relations between the two countries had hit rock bottom.

The White House said Sullivan raised concerns about contentious issues such as China's actions in the South China Sea, as well as on human rights and Beijing's stand on Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang. The issue of climate change on which the two countries can work together was also discussed.

Both Beijing and Washington said the talks were constructive and candid. The U.S. officials said the tone was very different from the acrimony at the Alaska meeting.

"We do have out of today's conversation an agreement in principle to hold a virtual bilateral (summit) meeting before the end of the year," the U.S. official told reporters.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said: "We're still working through what that would look like, when and, of course, the final details we don't quite have them yet."

"Today's conversation, broadly speaking, was a more meaningful and substantive engagement than we've had to date below the leader level," the official said.

However, at the same time the official said it shouldn't be seen as a thaw in relations.

"What we are trying to achieve is a steady state between the United States and China where we are able to compete intensely but to manage that competition responsibly," the official said.

China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Yang told Sullivan that confrontation would damage both countries and the world.

"The two sides agreed to take action … to strengthen strategic communication, properly manage differences, avoid conflict and confrontation," the ministry statement said.

Biden had said on Tuesday that he spoke to Xi about Taiwan and they agreed to abide by the "Taiwan agreement", as tensions are on the rise between Taipei and Beijing.

Communist China has been flying in waves of fighter jets into Taiwan’s air defence zone over four days to intimidate the democratically governed island which it considers a part of Chinese territory. Beijing has said it will even use force, if necessary, to annex the territory.  

Taiwan's Foreign Ministry, which had sought clarification from the United States about Biden's comments, said on Wednesday that Washington reassured them that its approach to Taiwan had not changed, and that its commitment to the democratically governed island claimed by Beijing was "rock solid," 

The US follows a one-China policy which recognizes Beijing rather than Taipei, and the Taiwan Relations Act, which makes clear that the U.S. decision to establish diplomatic ties with Beijing instead of Taiwan rests on the condition that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.

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