China has confirmed that discussions are under way on a possible trilateral meeting between Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin during the APEC summit in Shenzhen, scheduled for November 18 to 19.
US President Donald Trump has said he expects to meet both Xi and Putin at the summit, which would take place in the southern Chinese tech hub. Trump said the talks would cover ending the war in Iran and denuclearisation.
Putin proposed a trilateral format to discuss an end to Russia's war in Ukraine, according to the Wall Street Journal. Trump has said he was open to three-way arms control talks, and has also said he believes a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war is close.
Trump said in an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes program that a deal could result in a « little bit different shape Ukraine », without offering specifics. The Ukraine war and the Iran war are both expected to be on the agenda, alongside trade.
Wu Xinbo, director of the Centre for American Studies at Shanghai's Fudan University, who advises China's foreign ministry, said the meeting was very likely to happen and described it as showing the convening power of China's diplomacy.
Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Centre, said China wants the image of the meeting and that Russia would likely use it to draw China and the United States closer to Moscow's positions on Ukraine. Sun said China would not engage in discussions on arms control, Ukraine or Iran beyond its diplomatic position that wars should end.
The Beijing meeting would bring together three leaders who have been at odds on several fronts. Xi is the host and holds the decisive card, since the summit's invitations are issued by China and it is Beijing that must agree to host the talks.
Reporting from Beijing describes Trump as heading into the APEC summit in a weakened domestic position after Republicans suffered heavy losses at the midterm elections. The same reporting says that Beijing is weighing what a politically constrained Trump could mean for US-China relations and global affairs over the remaining two years of his term.
Beijing is also wary of being cast as a great power carving up spheres of influence around a negotiating table, an image that would contradict its pitch to the Global South as shared losers of the last century's power dynamics.
Trump has said he is open to a meeting with Xi and Putin focused on denuclearisation, and the Japan Times reported that the trilateral summit was moving closer to reality ahead of the APEC gathering.