China hosts Apec summit as Trump, Xi and Putin set for three-way meeting

Tariffs, AI governance and the South China Sea top crowded agendas

World leaders begin arriving across Asia for a rapid sequence of high-level summits, with China holding home advantage as it welcomes Donald Trump to its southern technology hub of Shenzhen for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meeting. The Apec gathering opens Wednesday, two weeks after Trump lost the US midterm elections, and follows the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Manila, which starts Sunday with Trump in attendance. The entire week unfolds against the backdrop of the tussle for influence between the United States and China.

Apec represents more than 60% of global GDP and has primarily promoted free trade and multilateralism. This year’s meeting could be defined, however, by the confirmed trilateral meeting between Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The three-way meeting has been likened to a modern-day Yalta, the 1945 conference at which US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Britain’s Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin met in Crimea to carve up Europe after the second world war. Analysts say a “Yalta 2.0” that issues edicts on Ukraine and Taiwan without their involvement is unlikely.

Xiaoyu Pu, an associate professor at the University of Nevada’s department of political science, said the three-way meeting “might be more symbolic than substantive, although symbolism itself matters in great-power diplomacy.”

“Trump appears interested in nuclear arms control and denuclearisation. Xi’s priority is likely to maintain a stable relationship with Washington while preserving China’s strategic partnership with Russia. Putin, meanwhile, wants to maintain his bargaining leverage over Ukraine,” Pu said.

The Shenzhen gathering also follows an awkward-at-best revelation, reported ahead of the summit, that the head of Nvidia — the US chipmaker that for a long time was the world’s most valuable company — was having an affair with a woman US intelligence suspects was a Chinese spy.

While Trump is in Manila, US officials will hold a sidelines meeting of the so-called Quad, grouping Australia, India, Japan and the United States. A Francophone summit, which includes Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron, is taking place concurrently in Cambodia.

Critical global issues on the summit agendas include AI supply chains and governance, tariff reductions and the green energy transition, while Trump’s focus has been on denuclearisation. A key regional focus will be the South China Sea, where Beijing has built massive military outposts in disputed waters, along with the gigantic Indonesian forest fire haze blanketing the region. Protesters gathered in Manila on Friday to object to Trump’s participation in the Asean summit.

The humanitarian and security crisis in Myanmar remains a perennial issue, as does the status of Taiwan, which China does not recognise. The self-ruled island is sending the founder of the tech hardware company Acer as its envoy to Apec.

The timing of this week’s summits coincides with an International Court of Justice judgment on Thursday that could find Myanmar responsible for genocide. Coup leader Min Aung Hlaing remains barred from Asean but is allowed to send a representative, and diplomats at the summit will focus on Myanmar’s bid for reintegration, with each member state assessing how to deal with its isolated neighbour.

Washington’s engagement in the region has been coloured for well over a decade by concern over the rise of China. President Barack Obama told Australia’s parliament in 2011 that the US was “a Pacific power, and we are here to stay” — a policy known as the “pivot to Asia” — and Joe Biden later adopted a strategy of intense diplomacy and trade deals, hoping to gather allies on the continent who wanted to balance their relationships with both superpowers.

Some analysts see Trump’s transactional style in Asia as a continuation of the pivot policy. Still, the president’s volatility and unpredictability have spooked smaller nations, which regard China as a more predictable partner. Beijing’s more predictable policies do not necessarily make it any more palatable to its regional neighbours: Chinese Premier Li Qiang could face tough talks when he goes to Manila for the Asean summit, especially on the South China Sea, and China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, recently urged Manila to rein in Filipino politicians who he said had repeatedly “smeared” Beijing after public outcries in the country over the disputed waters.

Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have been locked in decades-long territorial standoffs in the busy waterway, which could sit on deposits of oil and gas. Washington has sent military ships on “freedom of navigation operations” despite Chinese outcries, although US-linked crises in Iran, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Palestine and Israel have absorbed Washington’s focus during Trump’s second term.

Jayant Menon, an economist at Singapore’s Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute, said countries in south-east Asia had been “laying the groundwork for a future with reduced dependence on the United States” by seeking deals elsewhere, including with each other and the EU.

“Amid persistent uncertainty and an administration determined to levy tariffs by any legal means, south-east Asia’s ability to ride out another round of tariffs depends on deeper regional integration and diversification beyond the US market,” Menon wrote this month in the East Asia Forum.

A decades-long attempt to sign a South China Sea pact is not expected to conclude at this year’s Asean summit, as previously hoped. Despite monthly meetings, negotiations will have to continue next year, when Asean’s leadership rotates to Singapore.

Asia’s week of diplomacy will be followed next month by the G20 summit in Miami, Florida, which Xi is expected to attend if US and Chinese relations continue to hold steady.