Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has expressed a wish to build healthy relations with the United States by dialogue, a move that one mainland academic sees as representing the voice of pragmatic bureaucrats in Beijing’s corridors of power.

China’s No. 2 officeholder sounded conciliatory as he extended goodwill to Washington ahead of Alaska talks scheduled next week between the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and two senior Chinese diplomats, Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi.

Li admitted on Thursday that the two countries were different in their historical backgrounds, cultural heritage, stages of development and social systems. While these differences were hardly avoidable, Li believed that the key was in how to handle the issues, he told local and foreign media at a briefing for the fourth session of the 13th National People’s Congress in Beijing.

“In the past several years, China-U.S. relations have encountered great difficulties, which has adversely affected both countries and the world. As the world’s largest developing and developed countries, China and the United States both stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation,” the premier replied, when asked by a CNN reporter about the worsening bilateral relationship.

“In the past 40-plus years of diplomatic ties, China-US relations have gone through some twists and turns, but kept moving forward by overcoming obstacles. This is in keeping with the trend of world development and the fundamental interests of both countries.”

The Chinese and American peoples would have the wisdom and capability to carry out dialogue and interaction based on mutual respect and equality, Li said.

China hoped to see talks and exchanges in multiple areas and at various levels. Even if consensus could not be reached soon, the two countries could still share views to build trust and to better manage the differences, Li added.

The premier directly answered journalists’ questions without referring to any prepared script during the press conference on Thursday, according to observers.

Li is head of the State Council, China’s chief administrative agency.

His remarks on Sino-U.S. ties came across as friendlier and humbler compared to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

He was merely speaking on behalf of pragmatic bureaucrats in the central government, mainland Chinese scholar Wu Qiang said.

In fact, Li had not much of a voice in China’s relationship with the U.S. or other foreign affairs, and it was hard to ask the top official to adopt aggressive “wolf-warrior” diplomacy in giving his views, Wu added.

Meanwhile, an article published on China’s Twitter-like microblog platform Weibo on Friday said that Beijing was wary and suspicious of the upcoming high-level dialogue with Washington.

The article appeared on a Weibo account backed by the state media Xinhua News Agency. It described the meeting scheduled for March 18 as a “first blind date” and added that the choice of Alaska as the venue was down to the place being less political, which would be conducive for communication, especially on tricky issues.

At the same time, the writer warned that U.S. President Joe Biden “does not have good intentions,” given that the Washington government was still engaging in conduct such as sending the Seventh Fleet of the U.S. Navy through the Taiwan Strait for the third time.

Opportunities would be available, but so would plenty of risks, the writer said. Beijing should beware Washington’s Cold War mentality and its mindset of a zero-sum game, as well as efforts by some Western countries to attack and discredit China.

China should stay alert even if the situation seemed to be changing for the better, the article concluded.

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