BEIJING  -   US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US has seen evidence of Chinese attempts to “influence and arguably interfere” with the upcoming US elections, despite an earlier commitment from leader Xi Jinping not to do so.

Blinken made the comments to CNN’s Kylie Atwood in an interview Friday at the close of a three-day to trip to China, where the top American diplomat spent hours meeting with top Chinese officials including Xi, as the two countries navigated a raft of contentious issues from US tech controls to Beijing’s support for Moscow.

Blinken said he repeated a message President Joe Biden gave to Xi during their summit in San Francisco last November not to interfere in the 2024 US presidential elections. Then, Xi had pledged that that China would not do so, according to CNN reporting.

“We have seen, generally speaking, evidence of attempts to influence and arguably interfere, and we want to make sure that that’s cut off as quickly as possible,” Blinken said when asked whether China was violating Xi’s commitment to Biden so far.

“Any interference by China in our election is something that we’re looking very carefully at and is totally unacceptable to us, so I wanted to make sure that they heard that message again,” Blinken said, adding there was concern about China and other countries playing on existing social divisions in the US in influence campaigns.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday told top US diplomat Antony Blinken that the world’s biggest economies should be “partners, not rivals” as the two sides pressed for headway on a range of concerns.

Blinken, in China for the second time in less than a year, pointed to improvements in the relationship.

Meeting Blinken in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Xi said the two countries had “made some positive progress” since he met with US President Joe Biden in November. “The two countries should be partners, not rivals,” Xi said. But he issued a warning over what China considers US pressure to curb its economy, which have included a sweeping ban on semiconductor exports and efforts to wrest blockbuster app TikTok from its Chinese owners.

“We hope the US can also take a positive view of China’s development,” Xi said. “When this fundamental problem is solved,” he said, “relations can truly stabilise, get better and move forward”. Earlier China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned Blinken that US pressure could trigger a “downward spiral”.

Wang also warned that the question of self-ruled Taiwan was the “first red line” that must not be crossed in China-US relations.

Blinken described his talks with Wang at the Diaoyutai state guesthouse -- which lasted more than five and a half hours -- “extensive and constructive”.