NEW YORK -- U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan will travel to Switzerland to meet China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi, the White House announced Tuesday, a sign that the two sides are seeking to lower the temperature after years of rising tensions.

The meeting in Zurich, which may come as early as Wednesday, could pave way for the first in-person talks between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Rome, which begins Oct. 30.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Chinese diplomats have informed their G-20 counterparts that Xi does not currently plan to attend the summit in Italy. But a potential trip to an African forum could provide an opening for a Biden-Xi Rome summit. China is preparing to hold the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Senegal in the first week of November.

The forum will be attended by top representatives from over 50 nations and is viewed as an event of prime importance by Beijing. If the Chinese leader is preparing to make a trip to Dakar but has not committed to a summit in Rome, it may be a sign that he is seeking a firmer commitment towards progress from the U.S.

Eight months into his presidency, and after a bruising exit from Afghanistan, Biden is seeking a new phase of "relentless diplomacy." His trade representative Katherine Tai told the Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies on Monday that the administration will be looking for a "recoupling" with China rather than decoupling.

At the Zurich meeting, the two sides "will follow up on President Biden's Sept. 9 call with President Xi as we continue to seek to responsibly manage the competition between the United States and the People's Republic of China," the White House statement said.

In that September call, Biden expressed his intent to "manage" the competition between the two countries to ensure that it "does not veer into conflict."

Since then, there have been signs of a thaw in the chilly relationship. Last month, Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou returned to China after nearly three years in Canada. She reached an agreement with U.S. prosecutors to resolve fraud charges against her. China immediately released two Canadian citizens they had detained after the Meng arrest.

The dramatic turn of events came a few weeks after the Biden-Xi call.

At the U.N. General Assembly, Xi said Beijing will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad, a move that Council on Foreign Relations analysts Jennifer Hillman and David Sacks called something that "could become the most significant change to China's Belt and Road Initiative to date."

And on Monday, Tai, the U.S. trade representative, said she will be meeting her counterpart in China in the coming days to resume trade talks. While Tai said she will enforce the phase one trade deal signed between Beijing and the Trump administration, she also said, "Our objective is not to inflame trade tensions with China."

When asked if decoupling supply chains with China was a priority for the Biden administration, Tai replied in the negative.

"The concern maybe ... whether or not the United States and China need to stop trading with each other. I don't think that's a realistic outcome in terms of our global economy," Tai said.

"The issue perhaps is what are the goals we're looking for in a kind of recoupling. How can we have a trade relationship with China, where we are occupying strong and robust positions within the supply chain, and that there is a trade that's happening as opposed to a dependency?"

The Chinese leader has not stepped outside China since the outbreak of COVID-19. He visited Myanmar on Jan. 17-18, 2020, and moved to China's Yunnan Province for the next several days. This came as an unknown virus was beginning to wreak havoc in Wuhan, Hubei Province, and Xi was later criticized for not being in Beijing during the crisis. On Jan. 23, 2020, the central government imposed a lockdown on Wuhan.

While Xi has been reluctant to vacate the Chinese capital amid the pandemic, one event he may want to attend is FOCAC. Held once every three years since its launch in 2000, FOCAC has been Beijing's main platform to engage with Africa.

Held alternately in China and Africa, it has been hosted in Beijing, Ethiopia, Egypt and South Africa to date. The upcoming meeting in Dakar will be the first time FOCAC is held in West Africa.

Paul Nantulya, a research associate at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, said while the original plan was for Xi to address the meeting through video, "there is a very good chance he may want to attend in person."

"It would be a huge message, a huge symbol if Xi used his first overseas trip after COVID-19 to visit Africa," he said.

FOCAC has been a showcase of China's convening power. "More African leaders choose to attend FOCAC than the U.N. General Assembly, the world's largest summit," Nantulya said. "In 2018, 51 African presidents attended the FOCAC summit compared to just 27 at the General Assembly two weeks later."

If Xi attends FOCAC in Dakar, it may contrast China's commitment with that of Biden, who chose not to meet with any African leader during the U.N. General Assembly.

Analysts in the U.S. have been calling for the White House to focus on Africa, especially after the African Continental Free Trade Area, the largest such zone by number of countries since the creation of the World Trade Organization, took effect in January.

Landry Signe, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has called on Biden to visit Africa.

"Presidential visits are one of the highest expressions of respect," he said. "An international trip of Biden to Africa will be incredibly welcomed by the African community, sending a signal that it is not just about words."

Biden's predecessor Donald Trump was the first U.S. president since Ronald Reagan not to visit Africa during his term.

Additional reporting by Jack Stone Truitt in New York