Gates and Xi Meet for the First Time in 8 Years
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft (MS), will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to China on the 16th. This will be the first time in over three years that President Xi, who halted overseas visits due to the COVID-19 lockdown policy and entered his third term in power, meets with a foreign entrepreneur.
On the 14th (local time), major foreign media outlets, citing multiple sources, reported that Gates, who is visiting China, is scheduled to meet President Xi on the 16th, and it could be a one-on-one meeting. However, what the two sides will discuss during this meeting has not been disclosed.
Gates stated on his Twitter that day, "I have come to Beijing for the first time since 2019," and added, "I will meet with partners who have been working on global health and development challenges together with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."
The meeting between Gates and President Xi will be the first in eight years since they met at the Boao Forum in Hainan Province, known as the "Chinese Davos," in 2015. In early 2020, President Xi also wrote a letter expressing gratitude for Gates and his foundation’s pledge to provide $5 million to China to combat COVID-19.
This meeting is analyzed to be the first occasion for President Xi to meet with a foreign entrepreneur after several years of suspending overseas visits due to COVID-19. Foreign media have analyzed that "this will mark the end of a long hiatus during which President Xi stopped meeting foreign entrepreneurs as China closed its borders during the COVID-19 period."
Following the start of President Xi’s third term and China’s abandonment of the "zero COVID" policy and reopening of its borders, CEOs of various American companies from different sectors, including big tech companies like Apple and Tesla, as well as Wall Street’s JP Morgan, have directly visited China to demonstrate their commitment to their Chinese businesses.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, the largest investment bank in the U.S., gave a closed-door speech at the JP Morgan Global China Summit held in Shanghai at the end of last month, introducing that "the U.S. financial system operates based on transparency, investor protection, and the rule of law," while advising that "(in addition to U.S.-China conflicts) policy uncertainty from the Chinese government could undermine investor confidence."
In March, Apple CEO Tim Cook met with Premier Li Qiang, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk met with Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, but none of the CEOs who visited China were reported to have met with President Xi.
Meanwhile, the U.S. succeeded in arranging a China visit plan that had been canceled in February due to the Chinese spy balloon incident. The State Department officially announced that Secretary Blinken will depart Washington D.C. on the 16th and visit Beijing, China, and London, UK, until the 21st. Secretary Blinken is scheduled to meet with senior Chinese officials in Beijing on the 18th and 19th to discuss the importance of maintaining open communication channels between the two countries to responsibly manage U.S.-China relations.
This visit by the U.S. Secretary of State to China is the first since Blinken took office and the first in about four years and eight months since then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited in October 2018 during the Trump administration.
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