APEC Summit: Can Beijing pull off a Trump-Xi-Putin meeting?

(Edited and refined by Candice Chan, with the assistance of AI translation.)

China’s major military parade on 3 September 2025 produced a rare sight: Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un — the leaders of China, Russia and North Korea — standing side by side atop Beijing’s Tiananmen Gate.

Looking ahead to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ meeting in Shenzhen this November, could the “Xi-Putin-Kim” line-up give way to “Xi-Trump-Putin”, bringing together the leaders of China, the US and Russia? Such a gathering of major-power leaders is highly likely. Trump has already said that he will travel to China in November to meet Xi, while Putin, in a congratulatory message to Xi, said he expected the two to meet during the APEC gathering in Shenzhen.

China, the US and Russia are all nuclear powers and APEC members. The three leaders attended the 2017 APEC summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, where they appeared together in the “family photo”. Xi and Putin held a bilateral meeting, while Trump and Putin also spoke briefly on the sidelines.

The question now is whether the three can move beyond informal exchanges and bilateral meetings to hold a historic formal trilateral summit in Shenzhen.

How to get leaders to the same table

Bringing people together for a photo is easy; getting them around the same table is another matter. Addressing the Valdai Discussion Club on 1 October, Putin said he is open to a China-US-Russia trilateral meeting, but he also acknowledged the difficulties involved. “The most important thing is to single out the issues that could lay the foundation for such a trilateral summit; the key is to define the agenda for these negotiations.”

If the three leaders simply cross paths, conversation can be relatively casual — much as Xi, Putin and Kim chatted freely as they walked together atop Tiananmen Gate last year. But sitting down at the same table requires an agenda that all three have reason to engage with. What would they discuss? And what tangible results could they hope to achieve?

The trilateral relationship between China, the US and Russia, as well as the wider global landscape, have changed dramatically since 2017. Trump was then in his first year in office, and while trade frictions and strategic differences between China and the US had already begun to emerge, both sides still emphasised cooperation. Today, the relationship has evolved into full-blown strategic competition, along with efforts to manage that rivalry. An even more fundamental change is Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The global situation

If Xi, Trump and Putin meet in Shenzhen this November, it will be against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war, intense China-US competition, deepening China-Russia cooperation and an increasingly delicate strategic trilateral relationship among the three powers. The US is seeking greater engagement with Russia while factoring China-Russia ties into its strategic calculations; Russia wants to improve relations with the US while preserving its strategic partnership with China; meanwhile, China wants to maintain cooperation with Russia while keeping its rivalry with the US under control.

Their divergent interests mean that simply agreeing on an agenda would be a hurdle in itself. Against this backdrop, a “Yalta 2.0” is inconceivable. The Yalta Conference in 1945 took place under the exceptional circumstances of World War II, when the leaders of the US, the Soviet Union and Britain met as the war ended, to discuss Europe and the shape of the post-war order. Today, Europe, India, Japan, South Korea, the Middle East and countries across the Global South all have their own diplomatic autonomy and agency, while the international system has become increasingly multipolar — this is no longer a world that three great powers can sit down and carve up.

Trump has long pushed for an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, although he has yet to publicly endorse a trilateral summit. Even so, there is no lack of possible topics for a “Xi-Trump-Putin” meeting. After visiting China in May this year, Trump revealed that he had discussed denuclearisation with Xi and believed Russia should be involved. Following Xi’s visit to the US in September, the White House said in a post-meeting statement that Trump had called for trilateral arms-control talks among China, the US and Russia.

For Putin, meanwhile, such a summit offers an opportunity to communicate directly with the US and ease tensions between Moscow and Washington. The three leaders therefore have no shortage of things to talk about. The real question is whether they can find an issue important enough to bring all three to the table — and one on which a substantive breakthrough might actually be possible.

The North Korea factor

There is another intriguing variable: North Korea.

Trump, with his flair for the dramatic, has repeatedly said this year that he would like to meet Kim Jong Un. He has called Kim his “friend”, and even said: “I’m about the only person in the entire world that he likes, and I like him.” In mid-August, Trump also said that US-South Korea joint military exercises had been significantly scaled back, while describing his relationship with Kim as “very good”.

But Trump wanting a meeting does not mean Kim is equally keen. Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, previously denied that there had been any recent contact with the US and said Washington’s “hostile policy” towards North Korea remained unchanged.

Of Trump’s three previous meetings with Kim, the first two — in Singapore in 2018 and Hanoi in 2019 — were dedicated summits. In June 2019, Trump had another meeting with Kim on a side visit to Panmunjom during a trip to Japan for the G20 summit in Osaka. Whether Kim is now willing to return to the negotiating table, and under what conditions he might agree to meet, is another question.

North Korea is not an APEC member. If a “Xi-Trump-Putin-Kim” gathering or another Trump-Kim meeting were to happen during the Shenzhen summit, it would more likely be a separate diplomatic event arranged on the sidelines of APEC. One Chinese academic interviewed, however, believes that while China would be willing to provide the stage, the US and North Korean leaders might, for political reasons, be reluctant to hold such a high-profile meeting on Chinese soil. Given the competitive nature of China-US relations, Trump may be unwilling to hand Beijing a diplomatic coup, preferring instead to meet in a smaller, neutral country.

For China, facilitating dialogue and coordination among the various parties would fit neatly with its diplomatic narrative of opposing bloc confrontation and championing multilateralism. But how many players can ultimately be brought to the negotiating table at APEC — and what they can achieve once there — will depend not only on the host’s diplomatic skill in setting the stage, but also on whether the nuclear-armed powers involved can find common ground amid their competing strategic interests.

Getting a photograph together? That’s appearances. Sitting down at the same table? That’s diplomacy. Who ultimately takes a seat at the table in Shenzhen — and what they choose to discuss — may be the biggest question hanging over this year’s APEC summit.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “一桌能坐多少大国？深圳APEC悬念”.

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