Chinese President Xi Jinping met Microsoft co-founder and billionaire business magnate Bill Gates in Beijing on Friday (June 16) in Beijing. Regarding Gates as his ‘old friend’, Xi told him that China had always placed its hopes in the American people. Gates’ foundation pledged USD 50 million to help China’s efforts to battle disease.
Bill Gates is one of world’s richest men and he is latest in a string of Western business leaders to visit China after the country ended stringent Covid controls. These controls have largely closed it off from the world for almost three years.
The visit is Gates’ first to China in four years. The meet included rare sit-down between the Chinese head of state and a foreign business leader.
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“You are the first American friend I have met in Beijing this year,” Xi told Gates in Beijing, according to the state-run People’s Daily.
“We have always placed our hopes on the American people, and hoped for continued friendship between the peoples of the two countries,” Xi added.
Gates, in turn, said he was “very honoured to have this chance to meet”, according to a recording shared by state broadcaster CCTV.
“We’ve always had great conversations and we’ll have a lot of important topics to discuss today,” he said.
“I was very disappointed I couldn’t come during these last four years, and so it’s very exciting to be back.”
A state media readout also quoted Gates as praising China’s efforts in “tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, setting a good example for the world”.
The meeting between Xi Jinping and Bill Gates has come ahead of a visit to China by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The top US diplomat is going to visit China on Sunday. Beijing has said that during Blinken’s China visit, the two countries “will exchange views on China-US relations and major international and regional issues of common interest”.
“China will state its position and concerns on China-US relations and resolutely safeguard its interests,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular briefing on Friday.
USD 50 million to tackle disease
The meet follows an announcement by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Thursday that it would give $50 million to support Chinese efforts to fight malaria and tuberculosis.
The foundation has announced that it will renew a collaboration with Global Health Drug Discovery Institute (GHDDI). It is a Beijing-based group set up by Gates, the Beijing municipal government and Tsinghua University.
The Gates Foundation said in a statement that the USD 50 million will support “efforts to improve health outcomes worldwide through lifesaving therapies for infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, which disproportionately affect the world’s poorest”
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