Xi Jinping meets with Bill Gates in Beijing

BEIJING – Chinese leader Xi Jinping told his “old friend” Bill Gates on Friday that China had always placed its hopes in the American people, after the Microsoft co-founder’s foundation pledged $50 million to help Chinese efforts to battle disease.

Gates — one of the world’s richest men — is the latest in a string of Western business leaders to visit China since the country ended strict Covid controls that largely closed it off from the world for almost three years.

The visit is Gates’ first to China in four years, and included a rare sit-down between the Chinese head of state and a foreign business leader.

“You are the first American friend I have met in Beijing this year,” Xi told Gates in Beijing, according to the state-run People’s Daily.

“We have always placed our hopes on the American people, and hoped for continued friendship between the peoples of the two countries,” Xi added according to AFP.

Gates, in turn, said he was “very honoured to have this chance to meet”, according to a recording of the meeting shared by state broadcaster CCTV.

“We’ve always had great conversations and we’ll have a lot of important topics to discuss today,” he said.

“I was very disappointed I couldn’t come during these last four years, and so it’s very exciting to be back.”

A state media readout also quoted Gates as praising China’s efforts in “tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, setting a good example for the world”.

The meeting comes ahead of an expected visit to China by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday.

It also follows an announcement by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Thursday that it would give $50 million to support Chinese efforts to fight malaria and tuberculosis.

The foundation announced it would renew a collaboration with the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute (GHDDI) — a Beijing-based group set up by Gates, the Beijing municipal government and Tsinghua University.

The $50 million will support “efforts to improve health outcomes worldwide through lifesaving therapies for infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, which disproportionately affect the world’s poorest”, the Gates Foundation said in a statement.