China has confirmed officially for the first time that it is in contact with other governments about the possibility of a meeting between the leaders of China, Russia and the United States.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning made the confirmation at a press briefing, Hiru News reported. She said Beijing is maintaining contact with the relevant parties on the possibility of talks between President Xi Jinping, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The filing does not say the meeting has been agreed, scheduled or accepted by Washington or Moscow. What is confirmed is that China is discussing whether it can be arranged.
Where it would happen
The talks are reported as likely to take place alongside the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which China hosts in Shenzhen on 18 and 19 November.
Al Jazeera reported the same prospective meeting independently a day earlier, writing that Trump, Xi and Putin “may hold three-way talks on the sidelines” of the APEC summit in Shenzhen on those dates. Al Jazeera attributes the possibility to no named official, which is what makes Mao Ning’s statement a development rather than a repetition: it puts a Chinese government spokesperson behind a plan that had until now been reported without attribution.
Hiru News cited Bloomberg as noting that the foreign ministry issuing such a statement roughly two weeks before the expected date suggests Beijing is prepared for the meeting to go ahead.
The surrounding diplomacy
The report comes as separate efforts continue to end the war in Ukraine. Al Jazeera’s filing centres on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying he hopes talks in Abu Dhabi will open a path to a meeting with Putin.
Al Jazeera also records that the G20 summit is due in Florida from 13 to 15 December, and that it remains unclear whether Putin will attend — which would be his first appearance at the summit since the invasion of Ukraine.
A Xi–Trump meeting at APEC had already been expected. The two leaders last reached a substantive agreement in September, when they announced tariff reductions and an eight-point consensus. The addition of Putin would make the Shenzhen encounter a considerably larger event, coming while the United States is also engaged in a war with Iran that Trump has said will end soon.
Not reported
Neither source gives the date of Mao Ning’s briefing, the full wording of her statement, or any indication of what a three-way meeting would be intended to cover. Neither reports any confirmation from the White House or the Kremlin, and neither says who first proposed the format.
