US President Donald Trump's upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin has so far been met with skepticism and anxiety in Ukraine and across Europe, but there's one place where it's being welcomed: China.
China's Foreign Ministry said on August 12 that it is "glad to see Russia and the US keep in contact, improve their relations, and advance the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis." Those comments came after praise last week from Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a phone call with Putin where he encouraged both sides to advance a political resolution for the war in Ukraine at the upcoming meeting.
For Xi, the Trump-Putin summit comes as Beijing and Washington are working to improve their own relationship, extending a 90-day negotiating window late on August 11 to reach a trade deal and reportedly preparingfor a high-profile summit between Xi and Trump in October that could potentially set the stage for an even broader agreement between China and the United States.
Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank, says the summit in Alaska is being closely watched by Xi because it will allow him to "study the precedent for how it might translate to Asia before engaging" with Trump, potentially at their own summit where issues like trade relations and Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its own, are likely to be discussed.
"Beijing reads Alaska as validation of Trump's great-power bargaining instinct: Russia, China, and the US treated as coequal poles, with spheres-of-influence logic back in play," said Singleton.
China has emerged as Russia's strongest partner since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, boosting its economy with oil purchases, supplying its war-machine with dual-use products, and providing diplomatic backing on the world stage. And as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas in July, Beijing can't accept Russia's defeat in Ukraine.
A summit between the US and Russian presidents with Ukrainian and European leaders absent after is validation in Beijing that its strategy and patience could pay off, Singleton says.
"Alaska isn't about maps; it's about precedents," he said. "If aggression pays in Europe, deterrence discounts in Asia."
Will Trump Meet With Xi After His Summit With Putin?
There are still plenty of variables and unknowns as Trump and Putin prepare to sit down together on August 15 that could set discouraging precedents for Xi.
In recent days, Trump has tried to play down expectations for the summit, referring to it as a "feel-out meeting" and that he's not expecting to emerge from the meeting with a concrete agreement.
The US president is also in close contact with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders ahead of the meeting and said he will speak with them again "right after the meeting."
But with a summit emerging on the horizon, both Beijing and Washington could be looking to send each other goodwill gestures.
"My hazy crystal ball suggests that Trump will announce a new ‘great partnership' aimed at shifting the tone and character of the US-China relationship in a more positive direction," Graham Allison, a professor and China scholar at Harvard, wrote in an August 11 post on X.
No official date has been set for a meeting between Trump and Xi, but multiple media reports citing anonymous senior US and Chinese officials say several possibilities are being discussed while Trump is set to travel to Asia in October.
Both Trump and Xi are set to attend a summit for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Kuala Lumpur from October 26-28 and could be looking to hold their own meeting while in Malaysia.
Another possibility mentioned by officials is the two leaders meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in South Korea from October 31-November 1.
Trump and Xi could also look to potentially hold their own meeting in China during the few days in between the two summits while the US president is already in Asia.
What Comes Next?
In the meantime, all eyes will be on Trump and Putin in Alaska.
Kyiv and its supporters are worried Putin could use the meeting to push Trump toward supporting a deal that's advantageous to Russia.
Trump has also been vague about exactly what a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia should entail, but he again mentioned the possibility of a deal involving "land swapping" on August 11 while also stating he would "try to get some of that territory back for Ukraine."
Beijing has already secured a few encouraging signals from the White House.
China has already used its dominant position in the flow of rare earths, an essential group of elements that are needed to manufacture everything from electric vehicle batteries to vital defense technology, to get concessions on easing US export controls on Nvidia's H20 microchip.
The move overturned Trump's own decision in April, when he imposed an export ban on H20 chips going to China. The decision has divided experts, with some disputing the national security risks, saying they are not likely to give China a leg up in the AI race.
Others disagree, including 20 security experts and former US officials who signed an open letter condemning the decision.
"By supplying China with these chips, we are fueling the very infrastructure that will be used to modernize and expand the Chinese military," stated the letter, whose signatories included Trump's first-term deputy national-security adviser Matt Pottinger.
Several other moves in recent months have also been interpreted by China observers as conciliatory toward Beijing, including blocking the Taiwanese president's plans to transit through the United States on the way to a diplomatic tour of South America and canceling a meeting between US officials and Taiwan's defense minister in June.
"If Washington is perceived as 'selling out' Ukraine, Beijing will learn a simple lesson: Coercion pays and costs are containable," Singleton said.
