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.

Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence 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.

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.”