Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday, ahead of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s long-awaited visit to China.
According to Chinese state media, during the meeting, President Xi referred to Bill Gates as the ‘first American friend’ he had met in Beijing.
According to Chinese media reports, President Xi told Bill Gates, “I often say that the foundation of China-US relations is the people.” We always look to the American people and hope that the people of the two countries will have friendly relations.’
Earlier, Gates arrived in Beijing on Wednesday and wrote in a tweet on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation “to meet with partners dedicated to solving the global health and development crisis.”
This is President Xi’s first meeting with a foreign business figure in recent years. Xi has not traveled abroad since the lockdown in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. President Xi and Bill Gates last met in 2015.
Tesla owner Elon Musk, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon and Apple’s Tim Cook have visited China this year. However, they met with senior Chinese officials but did not meet with President Xi.
Bill Gates is visiting China as co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2020, Gates resigned from Microsoft’s board of directors to devote full time to the foundation, which works on global health, education and climate change. 12 years ago, he left the role of the chief executive officer of the technology giant Microsoft.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is due to arrive in Beijing by the end of the week, the first US minister to visit China since 2019. However, observers do not expect the visit to make much progress amid growing tensions between the US and China.
