In a rare encounter with an American business figure, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, met with Bill Gates on Friday as the Washington official was due to arrive in Beijing in an effort to restart bilateral discussions.
Mr Xi told Mr Gates he was “the first American friend he has met in Beijing this year”, according to the Communist Party’s People’s Daily. Mr. Xi also said he wanted to forge stronger ties with Mr. Gates’ philanthropic organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to aid developing countries.
The Gates Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Gates’ visit to China, his first since 2019, Antony J. Blinken’s visit, his first since becoming Secretary of State. It was not clear whether Mr Blinken would meet Mr Xi when he arrived on Sunday.
Mr Blinken had intended to visit China in February, a trip that was canceled because of a diplomatic crisis in Washington after a Chinese spy balloon intruded into US airspace.
Since Mr Xi abruptly lifted a long period of “zero Covid” restrictions in December, a range of US business leaders have returned to China, including Tesla chief executive Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook . (Neither of them met Mr. Xi.)
China’s strict pandemic policies had largely closed the country’s borders, preventing meetings between multinational officials and China’s top leaders. Mr. Xi’s trip to Central Asia last September was the first time he had left the country in more than two years.
Microsoft co-founder and one of the world’s richest men, Mr Gates, arrived in Beijing on Wednesday to meet with his foundation’s health and development partners. Said on Twitter.
This was not the first meeting of Mr. Gates and Mr. Xi. They met in March 2015 during a annual conference foreign dignitaries and business leaders in the island province of Hainan, and in Seattle later that year when Mr Xi was in the US for his first state visit. In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Xi sent a Letter Thank you and his foundation for donating to Mr. Gates Wealth For China’s epidemic fight.
Mr. Gates maintains ties to China through the Gates Foundation, recently pledging $50 million to a renewed partnership with the Beijing municipal government and a top Chinese university. He began stepping away from Microsoft in 2008, devoting more of his time to his philanthropic projects, and left Microsoft’s board of directors in 2020, according to financial data company FactSet. He remains the largest individual shareholder of Microsoft with stock worth approximately $35 billion.
