In early 1945, the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain met in the Crimean city of Yalta and struck a secret deal promising Moscow special rights in China in return for joining the war against Japan.
But China was not at the table.
“It is a historical lesson of great-power politics that China will never forget,” said Xin Qiang, a U.S.-China expert at Fudan University in Shanghai. “It was all done behind China’s back and at the expense of Chinese interests.”
More than eight decades later, Beijing is weighing whether to host a three-way meeting of President Trump, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping, China’s leader.
The meeting could affirm China’s ambition to be an indispensable global power on an equal footing with the United States, but it risks echoing the kind of great-power bargaining Beijing has claimed to resent. The prospect of such a gathering, floated by the Kremlin, has raised fears in Ukraine that Mr. Putin might push for a deal with Mr. Trump to end his war and decide the fate of Ukraine — without Kyiv’s involvement.
China confirmed on Wednesday that it is in talks with Russia and the United States about a meeting between the countries’ leaders, presumably on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, later this month. But it remained unclear if such a gathering would take place.
How Ukraine Complicates China’s Decision
China is wary of providing a platform for Mr. Putin to cut a deal with Washington over Ukraine.
Doing so would contradict Beijing’s position that peace talks require participation from Ukraine and Europe. Mr. Xi appeared to make that point as recently as last week.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, who visited Beijing, told a German broadcaster that when he met with Mr. Xi, the Chinese leader made it clear that he did not think the United States, Russia and China would be discussing the fate of Ukraine in Shenzhen.
“You could see the irritation on his face. He even asked where such rumors were coming from,” Mr. Steinmeier said.
“He explicitly stated that this is a European conflict and that the Europeans must be at the table,” he added.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has also expressed reservations about the possible talks, saying last week, “I really don’t want this to be ‘Yalta 2, 3, 4’ when there is a redistribution of influence,” according to Ukraine’s state news agency, Ukrinform.
Some in China view the secret bargain agreed on at the Yalta conference near the end of World War II as a betrayal. China’s then Nationalist government was pressed to relinquish its claim to what is now Mongolia and grant the Soviets special naval, transportation and commercial rights in Manchuria, in northeastern China.
A modern-day huddle involving the world’s three biggest nuclear-armed states would sit awkwardly with the image that Beijing has sought to project of itself as a champion for the interests of weaker nations. (In reality, China is not shy about flexing its muscle against smaller countries like the Philippines.)
“No matter what Putin, Xi, and Trump might discuss, the imagery of them meeting would raise questions about whether it implied some kind of condominium of great powers that would disregard the interests of smaller nations,” said Joseph Torigian, a historian of the Chinese Communist Party at American University in Washington.
“It would indeed be ironic for the Chinese if they decide that a trilateral meeting is nonetheless worth it for some reason,” he added.
Beijing Does Not Want to Discuss Nukes
Mr. Trump has said he would like to use a three-way meeting with Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin in Shenzhen to discuss denuclearization. The last nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia expired in February, and China is rapidly building its nuclear arsenal.
For Beijing, however, the topic is a nonstarter. Under Mr. Xi, China has shifted away from its decades-old strategy of maintaining an arsenal that would provide only a “minimum deterrent.” Instead, it is amassing a stockpile that could one day rival those of Washington and Moscow and has resisted placing limits on its development of nuclear weapons. It also has far fewer warheads — an estimated 620 — compared with more than 5,000 each for Russia and the United States, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Asked last month if China would agree to discuss denuclearization in Shenzhen with the United States and Russia, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, deflected. She said that it was Washington that had the primary responsibility to disarm, adding that it was “neither fair, reasonable nor realistic” to ask China to engage in nuclear disarmament negotiations.
Still, Chinese analysts suggest Beijing could agree to something narrower.
Zhao Long, a security expert at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said China might be open to talks on reducing the risks around a nuclear conflict.
That could include improving channels for communicating during crises and ensuring that even in the era of artificial intelligence, the countries maintain human control over nuclear decision-making — an issue on which China and the United States agreed in 2024.
The Risks of Playing Host
For all its reservations, Beijing is unlikely to turn Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin down, said Ryan Hass, a former career diplomat and White House national security official now at the Brookings Institution.
Mr. Hass recently made a trip to Beijing and met with Chinese officials and scholars who were interested in discussing what Mr. Trump wanted to get out of a trilateral meeting.
Mr. Hass came away with the impression that Beijing wanted to reap the rewards of a historic meeting, but was wary of the burden of making it a success.
“Xi typically avoids owning responsibility for high-profile diplomatic events with uncertain outcomes, so this event will stretch the Chinese side’s comfort zone,” Mr. Hass said.
To many officials in the West, China plays a key role in influencing Moscow because Russia has become so diplomatically and economically dependent on Beijing. In 2024, NATO accused China of being a “decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine,” urging it to halt shipments of “weapons components” and other technology that Russia needs to rebuild its military.
But to Beijing, China has little to do with the conflict that it did not help start and has not militarily supported. Some Chinese analysts suggest the most that Beijing could do was accommodate the talks while trying to distance itself from the idea that it can exert pressure on the Kremlin.
“If the United States and Russia want to talk, then China can’t tell them not to,” said Song Guoyou, an expert on U.S.-China relations at Fudan University in Shanghai.
If the three leaders met and the topic of Ukraine was on the agenda, he said, China would just be “a facilitator of dialogue, a provider of the platform, and a neutral witness.”
Valerie Hopkins and Jim Tankersley contributed reporting and Pei-Lin Wu contributed research.
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