China Says It Is in Contact on a First Xi-Trump-Putin Meeting at APEC Shenzhen

Photo: Fumikas Sagisavas, Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (file photo, March 2025). High-rise buildings in Shenzhen, host city of the 2026 APEC leaders’ meeting.

China is “in communication with relevant parties regarding a meeting between the three heads of state,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Wednesday, Nov. 4. She was answering a question about a possible meeting of Chinese President Xi Jinping, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ meeting in Shenzhen on Nov. 18-19. It was Beijing’s most direct public comment so far on the idea. Such a meeting would be the first among the three leaders, according to CNA, which carried the Agence France-Presse report.

Mao did not give a date, a format or a list of who would attend. China has not said such a meeting will take place.

What the Foreign Ministry said

According to the ministry’s English transcript of the briefing, an AFP reporter cited a Financial Times report that officials in Beijing, Moscow and Washington had been working to schedule talks between the three presidents on the sidelines of APEC. The reporter asked whether the ministry could confirm it. Mao’s full answer was the single sentence quoted above.

That answer goes further than Beijing had gone before. The Financial Times noted that the ministry said last month it had “no information to provide” about a possible three-way summit, Turkey’s Anadolu Agency reported. Some outlets, including Anadolu, paraphrased Mao as saying China is “maintaining communication.” The wording above is from the ministry’s own transcript.

At the same briefing, The New York Times asked about this week’s U.S. elections. Mao said “the U.S. midterm elections are a domestic affair” and that China stands ready to keep working with Washington to carry out what she called the “important common understandings” reached by the two presidents.

What Moscow has said

The Kremlin has been more open about the idea than Beijing. On Oct. 21, it said a meeting of the three leaders was “being prepared,” CNA reported. That day Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov told reporters, after a meeting between Putin and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg, that the two sides had discussed a possible three-way meeting and that no party had ruled one out, Anadolu reported.

In the Financial Times report published Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “Work is under way on organising such a meeting.” The newspaper said it was not clear whether the three governments were talking together or whether Beijing was holding separate talks with Washington and Moscow. It also cited people familiar with the talks who said China had not yet decided whether to go ahead. One of them said Washington and Moscow were pressing China to agree, according to Anadolu’s account of the report. The day before, Peskov had told reporters that Putin’s APEC schedule was still being prepared and that there was no specific information yet about a three-way meeting.

How the leaders have met so far

Xi, 73, and Trump, 80, have met twice this year, most recently when Xi visited the White House in September, CNA reported. They are due to meet again at a Group of 20 summit in Miami in December. At their last meeting, they pledged to extend a trade truce first reached in October 2025 and to look at cutting tariffs on $30 billion of goods on each side.

Trump last met Putin, 74, in person in Alaska in August 2025. Xi and Putin have met dozens of times. The most recent was in May, when Putin visited Beijing.

China is hosting APEC this year. The Shenzhen meeting brings together leaders and representatives from the forum’s 21 member economies. The city has been preparing for weeks. TBR reported on the car-free pledges and road work ahead of APEC week in Shenzhen.

Ukraine’s objection

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned last month that a three-way summit could be used to redistribute spheres of influence, CNA reported. “We really don’t want this to turn into ‘Yalta 2, 3, 4’, with a redistribution of influence,” he said. He was referring to the 1945 meeting of Soviet, U.S. and British leaders that shaped the map of postwar Europe. “Russia wants this meeting more than anyone,” Zelenskyy said, warning against giving Moscow “another major diplomatic advantage.”

The possible meeting comes as a separate track of U.S.-Russia-Ukraine talks moves ahead. TBR has reported on the Abu Dhabi talks set for Nov. 10-11, and its Ukraine war tracker follows the fighting.

Why it matters for the U.S.

A first sit-down of the U.S., Chinese and Russian leaders would bring together three permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. It would fall between two scheduled Trump-Xi meetings and while Washington is involved in talks to end the war in Ukraine. Trump and Xi also have unfinished trade business: their truce and the tariff talks cover goods that U.S. farmers and manufacturers sell to China.

For now, the facts are limited. Moscow says work is under way, Beijing says it is in communication, and neither has announced a meeting. More coverage of the region is in TBR’s Asia-Pacific news section.

Sources

• Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China: Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning’s regular press conference, Nov. 4, 2026
• CNA (AFP): China in contact with US, Russia on possible leaders’ meeting
• Anadolu Agency: China discussing possible meeting between Xi, Putin, Trump, says Beijing
• Anadolu Agency: Work underway to organize trilateral talks between Putin, Trump, Xi in China, Kremlin says

Additional sources

• Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China: spokesperson briefings index
• The Boston Report: geopolitics coverage