Why a Trump-Xi-Putin summit could be a double-edged sword for China

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

With just a month to go before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Shenzhen, there is renewed prospect of a summit bringing together the leaders of China, the US and Russia.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Russian President Vladimir Putin floated the idea during a phone call with US President Donald Trump on 9 October, hoping to seize this rare opportunity to discuss how to end the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also confirmed that discussions were under way, although the three countries had yet to reach an agreement on whether such a meeting would take place or what its agenda might be.

Verbal potshots

The news has cast a fresh spotlight on a series of recent moves by the Trump administration. Washington first struck a deal with Moscow for Russia to supply diesel to the US and global markets, after which Trump — defying mounting pressure — signed an executive order halting sweeping sanctions and tariffs against Russia that Congress had passed the previous month.

While these moves were primarily intended to ease the pressure on Republicans ahead of the midterm elections, they have also helped pave the way for a possible meeting between Trump and Putin.

Meanwhile, relations between Washington and Kyiv have taken a sharp nosedive. Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have been trading increasingly bitter accusations over the past week or so, with both resorting to unusually harsh language.

Trump has publicly described Zelenskyy as “not a good guy for us to deal with”, accused him of “(not wanting) to settle”, and even called for Ukraine to replace its president, declaring that “it’s time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine”.

Zelenskyy, in turn, has accused Trump of having an instinctive affinity for autocrats and seeking a quick end to the war at Ukraine’s expense — to put it plainly, that Trump wants to “sell out” Ukraine.

Trilateral diplomacy

On the prospect of a trilateral summit, Trump said on 19 October that he was open to meeting his Chinese and Russian counterparts. His chief focus, however, would not be Ukraine, but nuclear weapons and denuclearisation, as he stressed that a meeting among the three leaders to discuss denuclearisation would be “a very positive thing for the world”.

Of the three countries, only China has yet to make its position public. Given Beijing’s usual practice of announcing its leader’s diplomatic engagements, even if preparations for a summit are already under way, any official announcement is unlikely to come until shortly before the APEC meeting, or perhaps even just before the three leaders meet.

A trilateral summit would almost certainly steal the spotlight from APEC itself. Images of the three leaders together would likely overshadow the meeting’s broader agenda of economic cooperation across the Asia-Pacific. Yet China, as the host, may well welcome the prospect of such a historic gathering taking place in Shenzhen.

As one of the world’s most important annual multilateral gatherings, much of APEC’s value comes from providing opportunities for leaders to meet on the sidelines and engage in informal “corridor diplomacy”. This is particularly valuable for leaders whose countries have strained relations, as formal visits may be difficult to arrange. Such encounters can provide a rare opportunity to break diplomatic deadlocks.

A China-US-Russia summit would undoubtedly thrust the Shenzhen meeting into the international spotlight, making it a defining moment in China’s most important diplomatic event on home soil this year. It would also offer Beijing an opportunity to demonstrate its leadership in international affairs and its ability to coordinate diplomacy among major powers, potentially yielding substantial diplomatic dividends.

A Yalta 2.0?

In February 1945, then US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin gathered in Yalta, on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula, for a historic meeting that would have far-reaching consequences. The Yalta Conference helped determine the post-war division of interests and laid the foundations for a new international order.

A summit between the Chinese, American and Russian leaders on the sidelines of APEC would be unprecedented. The prospect has already raised concerns in some countries, reflecting a harsh reality of international politics: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

Ukraine, which now faces the risk of being abandoned by Washington, has reason to worry. Some analysts have also suggested that if Ukraine’s fate were to be decided at such a gathering, Taiwan could similarly become a bargaining chip in future negotiations among the major powers.

Different priorities

The renewed talk of Yalta 2.0 also reflects a broader reality: the international order established after World War II is coming under increasing strain. Even so, the chances of China, the US and Russia reaching substantive agreements capable of reshaping the global order at a single summit remain exceedingly slim.

Unlike the US, Britain and the Soviet Union, which met at Yalta as wartime allies, China, the US and Russia today are not allies. Each has its own interests and priorities.

Russia wants to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, while the US wants to extricate itself from the Middle East quagmire. China, meanwhile, may be more concerned about where Washington and Moscow stand on Japan and Taiwan.

Nor is denuclearisation, which Trump is keen to discuss, necessarily a priority for Beijing or Moscow. More fundamentally, the three countries have different visions of the world order they would like to see emerge.

Even if the three powers were to hold a summit to coordinate their positions on major international issues, the outcome would most likely be confined to broad statements of principle, with limited cooperation on a few specific issues at best.

Does China want this meeting?

There is also the question of whether staging a modern-day Yalta in Shenzhen would actually serve Beijing’s interests.

China certainly wants its growing strength and international standing to be recognised, and it seeks a greater say in shaping the global order. Yet Beijing has never endorsed the idea of a world jointly governed by a handful of major powers. Nor is it necessarily eager to share with Washington and Moscow the political responsibilities and strategic costs of tackling some of the world’s most intractable problems.

If a trilateral summit in Shenzhen were to become a forum for the major powers to carve up spheres of influence at the expense of smaller countries, Beijing would risk being drawn into an exclusive club of great-power politics.

Such an outcome would undermine China’s own vision of an “equal and orderly multipolar world” and constrain its ability to forge diplomatic partnerships with Europe, Asia and the Global South. Avoiding such a predicament is therefore likely to be one of Beijing’s central considerations, as it weighs the merits of hosting a China-US-Russia summit.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as ““雅尔塔2.0”猜想再起”.

Related: APEC Summit: Can Beijing pull off a Trump-Xi-Putin meeting? | George Yeo: APEC was built to unite the Pacific. Can it do so again?