The sticking point: Ukraine or nuclear arms control
China has not issued an invitation to host a proposed summit of Xi Jinping, President Trump and Vladimir Putin, and people familiar with the situation told The Wall Street Journal that a disagreement over the agenda is the obstacle. Putin proposed the meeting less than a month before China hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, and Trump is open to the idea, according to the outlet’s reporting. The outlet described the proposed meeting as unprecedented. A trilateral meeting on Chinese soil could put Xi at the center of diplomacy over the war in Ukraine, and the dispute over what the three leaders would discuss could end the meeting before it begins.
Agenda dispute and China’s mediation stakes
The Wall Street Journal described the prospect for Xi as both “tantalizing and fraught.” The outlet said a trilateral summit on Chinese soil would offer a dramatic demonstration of China’s arrival as a superpower on par with the U.S. Beijing had coveted the mediating role but never quite pulled it off, in part because its embrace of Moscow undermined its credibility as a neutral mediator. If the meeting could not get past the agenda dispute, the opportunity could evaporate before it began.
The newsletter also noted that China floated a peace plan for Ukraine in 2023 that omitted any demand for Russia to withdraw its forces from occupied territories. The outlet characterized the plan as going nowhere. It said a summit of the kind Putin proposed would go far beyond any position paper and put Xi physically at the center of the negotiating table.
Arms control, readouts and Beijing’s position
Putin pitched the summit around Ukraine. Trump pointed instead to nuclear arms control, an issue the outlet said Beijing had long resisted discussing with Washington and Moscow. The Wall Street Journal said a trilateral arms talk among the three countries would be a historic first for a U.S. president. Secretary of State Marco Rubio backed the proposal, calling it an opportunity for the three nuclear powers to discuss arms control at the leader level. The newsletter said this was where Beijing’s enthusiasm ran into a wall.
The outlet said China had long resisted engaging in nuclear talks because it was far behind: the U.S. and Russia each possess thousands of nuclear warheads, while China has a fraction of that. From Beijing’s perspective, the newsletter argued, entering arms-control negotiations now would effectively lock in the country’s nuclear inferiority. It said no Chinese leader was going to sign up for that and singled out Xi, who had overseen “the most significant expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal in its history.”
Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Washington-based Stimson Center, said Beijing’s likely play was to push back on the arms-control framing and see whether Washington insists. If Trump held firm on the nuclear issue as the price of admission, Sun said, the summit could stall before it started.
Xi’s state visit to Washington last month offered a preview of that standoff. The White House readout of the meeting between Trump and Xi mentioned arms control, but only as a U.S. push rather than an agreed agenda item or mutual commitment. According to its summary of the Sept. 24 meeting, Trump renewed his call for China to join trilateral arms-control discussions alongside the U.S. and Russia. Beijing’s official readout completely omitted nuclear arms control.
There is a scenario in which the agenda question resolves itself, Sun said. If a ceasefire or even a framework for ending the Ukraine war starts to take shape in the coming weeks, that “could become the summit’s theme,” she said, “especially given how Beijing would like to portray this summit as the most significant event in the history of world politics since the end of World War II.”
European and Taiwan consequences
The appeal to Beijing carries risks on two fronts, The Wall Street Journal said. A summit that sidelines Ukraine from discussions about its own fate would confirm the worst suspicions of European leaders, many of whom already believe Beijing is comfortable with a protracted war that drains the West while deepening Russia’s dependence on China. The outlet said it could accelerate the deterioration of China’s relationship with Europe just as Beijing is trying to stave off a trade war with Brussels.
Taiwan raises a similar tension. The outlet said that if the three major powers could meet and talk about Ukraine’s fate, Taipei would wonder whether it was next. It also said China has long insisted that Taiwan is a purely internal affair, not something for outside powers to weigh in on. A trilateral summit like this could invite the outside interference in Taiwan that Xi wants to foreclose.
The newsletter framed Xi’s opportunity as coming with a price, with the agenda dispute as the deciding question. A summit would bring Beijing the mediating role it has sought and a stage for China to present itself as a peer of the United States, while carrying costs in Europe and over Taiwan that Beijing had not resolved. Whether the meeting happened, the outlet said, rested on whether the parties could agree on what the three leaders would discuss.
Other items in the China newsletter
In a separate short item, The Wall Street Journal said Xi Jinping was turning Xinjiang into a trade hub despite global human-rights condemnation. The outlet said the effort was backed by $55 billion in annual state funding and a planned Central Asia railway slated for 2030.
Last week, the newsletter asked what Xi’s intensifying purge means for China’s political stability and published responses from readers. The outlet said the responses had been condensed and edited.
Nipun Ramaiya of the U.K. wrote: “This purge will lead to Xi being constantly surrounded by yes-men and yes-women. Decision-making will suffer from lack of policy debate. In addition, Xi’s advancing years will leave a leadership vacuum—unless potential successors are publicly visible and empowered. To me this looks like the beginning of a rerun of whatever happened after Mao passed away and the same could happen post-Xi with a different and very unknown cast of characters. Very questionable as to what kind of political stability this can lead to.”
John Fitzpatrick of Massachusetts wrote: “These widespread purges seem reminiscent of Stalin’s in the 1930s, with a similar potential to be profoundly destabilizing. Stalin was driven by increasing paranoia following his contest with Trotsky and other rivals after Lenin’s death. He was egged on by the murderous Beria, whose power grew in proportion to Stalin’s paranoia.”
Shinya Hanamura of Japan wrote: “Xi Jinping’s escalating purge will not deliver genuine political stability to China. Rather than signaling supreme strength, it marks the terminal phase of an authoritarian ‘autoimmune disease,’ wherein a regime that has eliminated all rival factions turns inward to attack its own functional organs, systematically freezing state capacity.”
In another short item, The Wall Street Journal said Kim Jong Un made a surprise trip to China across a newly opened $300 million border bridge that had sat idle for a decade. He met senior officials including Wang Huning but not Xi Jinping.