beijing top chinese and us negotiators spoke on the phone tuesday and agreed to push forward their phase one economic deal amid soaring tensions between the two sides on several frontsthe us and china signed the accord in january bringing a partial truce in their lingering trade war and obliging beijing to import an additional 200 billion in american products over two years ranging from cars to machinery and oil to farm productsbut the covid19 pandemic has put pressure on the agreement and chinas purchases of those goods has been laggingthe two countries confirmed the talks in separate statementsa statement from washington said the parties addressed steps that china has taken to effectuate structural changes called for by the agreementthose changes it said would ensure greater protection for intellectual property rights remove impediments to american companies in the areas of financial services and agriculture and eliminate forced technology transferit added that both sides see progress and are committed to taking the steps necessary to ensure the success of the agreementin its statement beijing said a constructive dialogue between the two sides had agreed to create conditions and atmosphere to continue to push forward the implementation of the phase one of the chinaus economic and trade agreementthe phase one deal called for officials to hold a checkin every six monthsus president donald trump in recent weeks has stepped up his rhetoric against china ahead of what is expected to be a tough reelection fight raising questions about the deals fate as well as the possibility of a phase two agreementtensions between the two countries have risen over a host of issues including blame for the pandemic and chinas policies in xinjiang and hong kongand confirmation of the call came as tiktok owned by chinese parent company bytedance filed a lawsuit challenging the us governments crackdown on the popular video app which washington accuses of being a national security threatthe trump administration has given bytedance a deadline to divest tiktok before the app is banned in the united states arguing tiktok could be used by china to track the locations of federal employees build dossiers on people for blackmail and conduct corporate espionagethe company says it has never provided any us user data to the chinese government and beijing has blasted trumps crackdown as political