Global Courant
In a rare meeting with a US businessman, China’s leader Xi Jinping met with Bill Gates on Friday as Washington officials were about to arrive in Beijing in a bid to resume bilateral talks.
Mr Xi told Mr Gates that he was “the first American friend I met in Beijing this year,” according to the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily. Mr Xi also said he wanted to build stronger ties with Mr Gates’ philanthropic organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to help with aid to developing countries.
The Gates Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Gates’ trip to China, his first since 2019, coincides with a visit from Antony J. Blinken, his first since becoming Secretary of State. It was unclear whether Mr. Blinken, who arrives on Sunday, would meet Mr. Xi.
Mr Blinken had planned to go to China in February, a visit canceled after a Chinese spy balloon’s invasion of US airspace sparked a diplomatic crisis in Washington.
Since Mr Xi abruptly lifted a protracted period of “zero Covid” restrictions in December, a string of US corporate leaders have returned to China, including Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, and Apple’s CEO Tim Cook. (Neither of them has met Mr. Xi.)
China’s strict pandemic policies had largely closed the country’s borders, preventing meetings between multinational executives and top Chinese leaders. A journey from Mr. Xi to Central Asia last September was the first time he had left the country in more than two years.
Mr Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s richest people, arrived in Beijing on Wednesday to visit health and development partners for his foundation. said on Twitter.
This was not a first meeting for Mr. Gates and Mr. Xi. They met in March 2015 during a annual conference of foreign dignitaries and business leaders in the island province of Hainan, and again in Seattle that year when Mr. Xi was in America for his first state visit. In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Xi one letter to Mr. Gates to thank him and his foundation for their donation money to China’s pandemic struggle.
Mr. Gates maintains ties with China through the Gates Foundation and recently pledged $50 million in a renewed partnership with the Beijing municipal government and a top Chinese university. He began moving away from Microsoft in 2008, devoting more time to his philanthropic projects, and left Microsoft’s board of directors in 2020. He remains Microsoft’s largest single shareholder with about $35 billion in shares, according to financial data company FactSet .
