China provides update on plans for historic Xi-Putin-Trump meeting

China has confirmed that it is discussing a historic meeting of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a press briefing this week that Beijing was “in communication with relevant parties regarding a meeting between the three heads of state”.

The three-leader gathering could take place this month on the sidelines of a regional summit in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

It would be historic if the meeting were to happen, but experts argued the leaders of China, Russia and the US were unlikely to discuss anything substantive because their interests were at odds. They would gather for a photo, the experts said, with China carefully choreographing the meeting.

“I think it will happen. The question is the format and the content,” Sun Yun, director of the Stimson Centre’s China programme, said. “China wants the image but not the costs.”

Beijing is hosting this year’s summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a 21-member grouping that includes the US and Russia, this month.

Mr Trump is expected to travel to Shenzhen and meet the Chinese leader for the third time this year, maintaining a fragile trade truce that is set to expire in January.

In a sign that tensions persist, American trade representative Jamieson Greer urged China during a video call with vice premier He Lifeng on Friday to take “concrete actions to fully implement its past commitments, particularly as they relate to agricultural purchases, rare earths, and critical minerals”.

Chinese news agency Xinhua reported on Saturday that the two sides had constructive exchanges and that Beijing expressed concerns about Washington’s restrictive economic and trade measures against it.

Mr Trump previously said that he would be interested in meeting Mr Xi and Mr Putin to discuss nuclear arms controls, though Mr Putin was focused on talking about the Ukraine war without Kyiv at the table.

“Putin has the most to gain from a leaders’ trilateral and the Russians are clearly behind the push for a meeting, which would be a diplomatic coup,” said Danny Russel, a former senior US State Department official who served in former president Barack Obama’s administration.

Mr Trump, with his “crush on authoritarian strongmen", would love the meeting, though he clearly had been warned by his advisers to steer clear of Ukraine as a topic of the discussions, said Mr Russel.

Ms Sun of the Stimson Centre said Russia would likely use the summit to nudge China and the US closer to Moscow's positions on Ukraine, while “China will have to manage Russian manipulation”.

China also would not engage in talks on arms controls or discussions about Ukraine or Iran, other than its diplomatic refrain that peace was important and wars should end, Ms Sun said.

Beijing's biggest challenge might be the perception. The summit “should not be equated to three great powers dividing up the world”, she said.

The meeting might amount to no more than a photo opportunity that would allow Mr Putin to be seen next to American and Chinese leaders, Craig Singleton, senior director of the China programme at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said.

“But these photo opportunities have diminishing diplomatic returns,” Mr Singleton said. “The spectacle may be historic without producing anything particularly consequential.”