Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, on Thursday, Chinese state media reported.
State news agency Xinhua said Xi held the conversation with Trump “at the latter’s request”.
The call came after Washington and Beijing traded accusations of breaching a deal reached just weeks ago in Geneva, where the world’s two biggest economies had agreed to dramatically cut mutual tariffs for 90 days , an outcome Trump dubbed a “total reset”.
It was their first phone call since the two countries started imposing fresh duties on each other’s goods in February.
The conversation has been widely seen on both sides as the highest political endorsement for de-escalating the trade war , which threatened to reshape global trade flows for the coming decades.
Tensions between the world’s two biggest economies have flared again in recent weeks.
The Trump administration had claimed that China had been slow to ease export restrictions on rare earth elements , which are essential for a broad range of consumer and military technology that China holds a strategic grip over.