Global Courant
HONG KONG – Mr. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday during his visit to China, two experts said.
The meeting marks Mr Xi’s first meeting with a foreign private entrepreneur in recent years. The people said the meeting could be a one-on-one meeting. A third source confirmed they would meet, without providing details.
The sources did not say what the two would discuss. Gates tweeted on Wednesday that he had landed in Beijing for the first time since 2019 and would meet with partners who had worked with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on global health and development challenges.
The foundation and China’s State Council Information Office, which handles media inquiries on behalf of the Chinese government, did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Mr. Gates stepped down from the Microsoft board in 2020 to focus on philanthropic works related to global health, education and climate change. He retired from his full-time executive role at Microsoft in 2008.
The last reported meeting between Mr Xi and Mr Gates was in 2015, when they met on the sidelines of the Boao Forum in Hainan Province. At the beginning of 2020, Mr. Xi a letter to Mr. Gates thanking him and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for their commitment to China, including $5 million (S$6.7 million) for the country’s fight against Covid-19.
The meeting would mark the end of a long hiatus by Mr Xi in recent years from meeting foreign private entrepreneurs and business executives, after the Chinese president stopped traveling abroad for nearly three years as China closed its borders amid the pandemic.
Several foreign CEOs have visited China since it reopened early this year, but most have mainly met with ministers.
Premier Li Qiang met with a group of foreign CEOs, including Apple’s Tim Cook, in March, and a source told Reuters that Tesla’s Elon Musk met with Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang last month.
However, the mood of foreign business towards China has turned cautious as tensions rise between China and the US and Mr Xi increases the country’s focus on national security.
Mr Gates’s visit also comes on a long-delayed visit to China by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, scheduled for June 18-19, which is intended to improve relations between the world’s two largest economies and stabilize strategic rivals.
Blinken had a telephone conversation with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Wednesday, in which Qin urged the United States to stop interfering in their affairs and harming their security. REUTERS
