Chinese President Xi Jinping said in Beijing on Friday that the Asian country has always placed its hopes in the American people, during a rare meeting with Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
“The foundation of Sino-US relations lies in people-to-people relations. We have always pinned our hopes on the American people and hope that the friendship between the two peoples will continue,” Xi Jinping was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency. .
“You are the first American friend I have met this year,” the Chinese leader said, according to People’s Daily, which wrote that Bill Gates is being welcomed as co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Encounters like these have been very rare. In recent years, Xi has individually hosted only a few American businessmen, including Apple’s Tim Cook and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
The meeting takes place two days before the expected visit to China by the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in a context of strong diplomatic tensions between Beijing and Washington.
The Microsoft co-founder was received in Beijing by Xi during a visit to support China’s efforts in medical research.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced Thursday the donation of 50 million dollars (45.7 million euros) to support Chinese efforts in the fight against malaria and tuberculosis.
This amount is intended to support “efforts to improve health outcomes around the world through vital therapies for infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria,” the foundation said.
These diseases “disproportionately affect the world’s poorest countries,” he insisted.
With this trip, his first to China since 2019, the Microsoft co-founder follows in the footsteps of several other big names in the US economy, including Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX owner Elon Musk, who was in the country in May. .
China reopened its doors only six months ago, after almost three years closed to the world due to anti-covid-19 sanitary measures.
The foundation will also renew its cooperation with the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute (GHDDI), founded in 2016 in Beijing by the Gates Foundation, Tsinghua University of China and the capital’s municipal authorities. “China has made considerable progress in reducing poverty and improving health in the country,” Gates said in a speech on Thursday at the GHDDI.
“I hope China can play an even bigger role in addressing current challenges, particularly those faced by African countries,” he added.
Bill Gates last visited China in 2019, when he met with First Lady Peng Liyuan to discuss the foundation’s work in AIDS prevention.
Source: TSF
