Bill Gates and Xi Jinping met Friday, marking the Chinese leader’s first known one-on-one meeting with a Western business figure in years.
Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and world’s fifth-richest man, is in Beijing this week for his first trip to the Chinese capital since 2019, before the pandemic.
During their meeting, Xi called on Gates to help promote US-China relations, greeting the tech tycoon warmly. “I am very happy to see you. We haven’t seen each other for more than three years … and you are an old friend of ours,” Xi said, according to Chinese state media.
Xi went on to tell Gates that he was “the first American friend I’ve seen this year.”
“I always believe that the foundation of the US-China relationship is in the people. I am placing my hope in the American people,” the Chinese leader was quoted as saying.
The billionaire’s latest visit comes at a precarious time for US-China relations. Tensions are running high over the future of AI and advanced semiconductors, raids by Chinese officials on international companies, and heightened fears that China could attack Taiwan.
This is not the first time Xi has called on American business leaders to help improve relations between their two countries. In 2021, Xi wrote to Starbucks’ former chairman and CEO Howard Schultz, suggesting he help promote bilateral ties, according to Chinese state media.
Gates’ meeting with the leader of the world’s second largest economy came a day after his family’s foundation pledged $50 million toward research in China for drug discovery and treatments of “infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, which disproportionately affect the world’s poorest,” according to a statement from the Gates Foundation.
The entrepreneur is one of the premier foreign business leaders who have broken through in China, with Microsoft one of the only Western tech giants to retain a presence there as others have been shut out. The company has had a hugely influential research lab in the country for decades.
In previous years, Gates has enjoyed good relations with Xi. In early 2020, the Chinese leader personally sent him a letter of thanks for sending emergency funding to the country in its fight against Covid-19.
SOURCE: CNN
