Nov. 14 — U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping are planning to hold a landmark trilateral summit on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in China next week, the White House announced on Saturday.
White House Press Secretary Olivia Wales told reporters that the meeting among the leaders of the world’s three largest nuclear powers will take place during Trump’s visit to the southern Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen for the APEC summit.
Outlining the agenda, Wales said: “The president has made clear that, among other issues, he will discuss nuclear arms reduction around the world, the proliferation of which President Trump views as extraordinarily dangerous.”
While tensions surrounding Iran are also expected to feature in the discussions, the conflict in Ukraine will reportedly be excluded from the trilateral talks. Neither Moscow nor Beijing has issued an immediate formal confirmation of the three-way gathering. Citing an anonymous senior U.S. official, the Associated Press and Reuters reported that no immediate formal treaty or binding agreement is expected to be signed at the conclusion of the meeting.
Trump is scheduled to arrive in Shenzhen on Wednesday evening ahead of the two-day summit of the 21-member Pacific Rim bloc and will hold bilateral talks with Xi on Thursday—marking their fourth face-to-face meeting since Trump returned to the White House in 2025. Wales confirmed that the trilateral summit involving the presidents of the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and the Russian Federation will cap Trump’s trip to China. She added that his broader Asia itinerary—which includes attending the ASEAN summit in the Philippines on Tuesday—will “secure historic wins for the American people and advance American interests across the Indo-Pacific.”
The diplomatic push comes following the expiration in February of the last major bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, which left the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals unconstrained by binding caps for the first time since the Cold War era. While the United Nations has urged Washington and Moscow to negotiate a replacement framework without delay, Trump has insisted that any successor accord must incorporate China, which has been steadily expanding its nuclear stockpile. Former senior U.S. officials and arms control analysts previously cautioned the BBC that bringing both Beijing and Moscow into a unified framework poses steep diplomatic hurdles and could take years to finalize.
Earlier this year, Xi hosted Putin and Trump separately in Beijing within days of each other, before Trump welcomed his Chinese counterpart to Washington in September. On Friday, Chinese state media cited a Foreign Ministry spokesperson stating that Xi would conduct “bilateral” meetings on the margins of APEC, without mentioning a three-way summit. Meanwhile, Russian state news agency TASS reported earlier this month that Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov indicated there were “signals confirming preparation” for such discussions at the gathering.
Source: BBC News Dispatches, Associated Press (AP), Reuters & White House Press Office, Washington, D.C.