The U.S. and China will have their first high-level meeting under the Biden administration Thursday, with both sides coming to the table with a long list of grievances and little expectation for any resolution.

President Joe Biden’s two top foreign policy advisers, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, are meeting their Chinese counterparts in Anchorage, Alaska, on Thursday and Friday. Both men have promised to deliver a strong, but more nuanced approach to Beijing than Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump — standing up with allies for human rights and against economic coercion, but seeking common ground on issues like climate change.

Representing Chinese leader Xi Jinping are State Councilor Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, and Yang Jiechi, the director of the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Foreign Affairs and effectively its top diplomat. They arrived in a frozen Anchorage Wednesday night to “firmly defend (China’s) core national interests,” according to Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai.

Neither side is expecting much progress. The meetings will not conclude with a joint statement, according to a senior U.S. administration official, and there are no plans for future meetings for the time being.

“I’m not very confident that we’re going to be able to persuade the Chinese of the error of their ways and the righteousness of ours just over the course of a couple of hours’ worth of talks, but I think it is important that each side know where the other does stand,” said a second senior administration official.

On the U.S. list of “priorities and intentions,” Blinken and Sullivan are expected to raise China’s treatment of Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, end to democratic self-rule in Hong Kong, economic coercion against U.S. allies and partners, and aggressive activities towards Taiwan, the senior officials said.

The White House has said it’s important to lay that foundation of understanding, including on “the areas where we intend to take steps” and those where China’s behavior “need(s) to change before we can take substantial steps forward in the relationship,” as the first official said.

But Chinese officials have already dismissed U.S. concerns over those issues as domestic matters for China to deal with, and, “When its core interests are involved, China has no room to back down. This position will also be clearly articulated in the dialogue,” Ambassador Tiankai told Chinese state media Wednesday.

“If anyone believes that the Chinese delegation travels to Alaska, still freezingly cold, and goes to such lengths with great sincerity, just to give in and make compromises, then I would suggest my colleagues in Beijing cancel their trip. Why bother coming?” he added.

Still, there is some hope on both sides that the U.S. and China can at least avoid further deterioration in relations after four years of Trump’s efforts to break apart U.S.-China relations.

“It’s good that we’re opening up these channels of communication,” the second U.S. official told reporters during a briefing Tuesday night, with the first adding, “This is very much about sitting down, getting an understanding of each other, and then taking that back and taking stock.”

Ambassador Cui similarly downplayed expectations during his own briefing Wednesday, saying, “I hope that it will become a beginning and that the two sides will start a candid, constructive and rational process of dialogue and communication. … that the two sides will come with good will and leave with better mutual understanding.”

There are limits to that understanding, however, especially as antagonistic forces rise on both sides. Nearly half of Americans say China is their country’s greatest enemy, according to the Pew Research Center, a figure that has doubled in the last year. Favorable views of China have fallen to a historic low of 20 percent, Pew’s polling found.

“Gone is the optimism about China’s behavior becoming more moderate, as well as the belief that Beijing is ready to be a net contributor to global goods. In its place is a more assertive approach designed to mitigate the Chinese Communist Party’s capacity and will to advance objectives antithetical to U.S. interests,” wrote Eric Sayers, an Asia-Pacific defense policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

The Biden administration waited a few weeks before arranging this week’s meetings to first take steps to “strengthen” its position, the senior administration officials said, including through the COVID-19 stimulus package’s passage and “substantial” engagement with U.S. allies.

Blinken arrived in Anchorage Thursday from visits to Japan and South Korea — his first overseas travel as the top U.S. diplomat — where he praised America’s key alliances in East Asia as the “linchpin for peace, security, and prosperity in this region and beyond.” For his part, Sullivan held a call with his British, French, and German counterparts Tuesday to preview his meetings, the White House said.

Including both Sullivan and Blinken is “really important” as well, the senior officials said, to signify this administration is “unified” and the Chinese government can’t play “games” like they have in the past “to attempt to divide us.”