The US State Department announced on Tuesday that a US official visited China last week, in a move that reflects a shy resumption of dialogue, nearly two months after Washington abruptly canceled a visit by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken .

Rick Waters, who heads a new body in the US State Department called "China House" concerned with overseeing US policy towards China, visited the capital, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, according to what was announced by the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vedant Patel, in a statement to reporters.

Patel said Waters "met with his counterparts" and established US personnel in China.

Patel played down the importance of the visit and did not want to reveal the topics discussed or the results of the talks.

Blinken was scheduled to visit Beijing in early February, and he was supposed to be the highest-ranking US official to visit China in nearly five years.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden had agreed to visit during talks they held on the sidelines of the G20 summit that was organized in November and hosted by Bali, where they agreed to work to contain the escalating tensions between the two largest economic powers in the world.

But Blinken canceled the visit after the United States announced the monitoring of a Chinese balloon flying in its airspace, which it said was for espionage purposes.

Since then, tensions have escalated, and Xi publicly accused the United States of seeking to "contain, encircle and suppress China," and went to Moscow to cement relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.