US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Beijing Saturday on the second leg of a three-nation East Asian tour to discuss North Korea's recent provocation, dpa reported.
Kerry was scheduled to hold his main talks in China with Foreign Minister Wang Yi before shorter meetings with President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and other Chinese leaders.
On Friday in Seoul, Kerry warned North Korea that it would be a "huge mistake" to test-fire a mid-range missile and said the isolated communist state "will not be accepted as a nuclear power."
Apart from North Korea, Kerry and Wang were expected to discuss a series of "challenges in Sino-US relations," the state-run Global Times newspaper said in a commentary.
"China-US trade and economic cooperation have kept growing in the past few years but so has the atmosphere of distrust and defensiveness," it said.
It said China hoped to see a "softer track" of diplomacy from Kerry after the "hard line" of his predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Kerry was scheduled to leave Beijing on Sunday for talks in Tokyo.