The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is due to meet business leaders in Shanghai on Thursday, the second day of a three-day visit to China.

Blinken is due to wrap up his visit in Beijing on Friday, with talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and possibly President Xi Jinping.

Despite an increase in contacts between China and the US recently - including a summit between President Xi and President Joe Biden - a Shanghai-based expert says he's pessimistic about the future of relations between the two countries.

"I remain a pessimist. I've been a pessimist on US-China relations since the Alaska meetings that took place shortly after Biden took office. I was hopeful that we would see a significant improvement after the Trump years," Josef Gregory Mahoney, a professor of politics at East China Normal University, told RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme.

"I'm very concerned that Trump may be re-elected. I think a lot of people in the world are concerned about that. But whether he's re-elected or not, you know, if Biden is re-elected or Trump, I think we all anticipate that things are going to continue to get worse," he added.

However, Mahoney stressed there were some areas where both countries must work together - in their own best interests.

"It's clear that they have to cooperate on some very basic issues," he said.

These included the global financial system "because both countries depend on that substantially, not only for their own bilateral trade, but for the global trade system as a whole", he said.

"If China doesn't go along with the dollar or the way that the system works from the US point of view, then that threatens the US economy as well. So there is some shared concern there. We've also heard reports that they might be discussing other issues that won't be well-publicised, perhaps including militarisation in space," Mahoney said.

He said issues like climate change and increased cooperation seem to have "slipped far from the conversation, despite it being a growing existential concern" for both sides.