A group of U.S. lawmakers on a rare visit to Beijing told China’s number two leader, Premier Li Qiang, that the world’s two largest economies need to step up engagement and “break the ice” as both superpowers made further inroads into stabilizing ties.

The visit on Sunday was the first House of Representatives delegation to visit China since 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic ended formal House visits in 2020, and relations rapidly deteriorated due to disagreement over the origins of the coronavirus that had spread all over the world.

The trip by the bipartisan delegation, announced this month, follows a call on Friday between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping as both countries seek a course out of a period of strained ties exacerbated by trade tensions, U.S. restrictions over semiconductor chips, the ownership of TikTok, Chinese activities in the South China Sea, and matters related to Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory.

This “ice-breaking” trip will further bilateral ties, Premier Li told the lawmakers, according to a pool report organized by the U.S. embassy in China.

The delegation is led by Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington. He is a former chair of and current top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees the Defense Department and armed forces.

“We can both acknowledge that both China and the U.S. have work to do to strengthen that relationship, which should not be, what, seven, six years between visits from the U.S. House of Representatives,” Smith told Premier Li.

“We need more of those types of exchanges, and we are hoping, to your words, that this will break the ice and we will begin to have more of these types of exchanges.”

In the interim years between the meetings, when COVID-hit China largely shut its borders to the outside world, U.S. lawmakers had focused their visits elsewhere.

Smith told NBC News on September 9 that opening up bilateral dialog was important.

“Merely talking with China is not endorsing everything that they do. It’s like China is a big, powerful country. We are a big, powerful country. I think we need to talk about that,” he said.

Trips by U.S. lawmakers included visits to democratically-governed Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory and regards as the most important and sensitive issue in its relations with the United States.

In 2022, then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a delegation of Democratic members of the House to Taiwan as part of a wider Asia tour. The trip infuriated China, which tells other countries to avoid official engagements with Taiwan, and triggered massive Chinese military exercises in waters and airspace around the island.

A year later, U.S. lawmakers angered Beijing again when Michael McCaul, then chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, visited Taiwan. McCaul, who was later sanctioned by China, pledged to help provide training for Taiwan’s armed forces and speed up the delivery of weapons.