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BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet with Bill Gates in Beijing On Friday, Chinese state media CCTV reported.
It will be Xi’s first meeting with a foreign businessman in recent years. He stopped traveling abroad for nearly three years as China closed its borders during the pandemic. Reuters was first to report the plans for the meeting.
Since arriving in Beijing for the first time since 2019 on Wednesday, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist has delivered a speech at the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute on the need to use technology to solve global health challenges.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Beijing municipal government, which founded the institute with Tsinghua University, have also pledged $50 million each to boost the institute’s drug discovery capacity.
Gates stepped down from Microsoft’s board of directors in 2020 to focus on philanthropy related to global health, education, and climate change.
The last reported meeting between Xi and Gates was in 2015, when they met on the sidelines of the Boao Forum in Hainan Province. In early 2020, Xi wrote a letter to Gates thanking him and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for pledging aid to China including $5 million for the country’s fight against COVID-19.
A number of foreign CEOs have visited China since its reopening early this year, but most of them have mainly met with government ministers.
It will be Xi’s first meeting with a foreign businessman in recent years. He stopped traveling abroad for nearly three years as China closed its borders during the pandemic. Reuters was first to report the plans for the meeting.
Since arriving in Beijing for the first time since 2019 on Wednesday, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist has delivered a speech at the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute on the need to use technology to solve global health challenges.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Beijing municipal government, which founded the institute with Tsinghua University, have also pledged $50 million each to boost the institute’s drug discovery capacity.
Gates stepped down from Microsoft’s board of directors in 2020 to focus on philanthropy related to global health, education, and climate change.
The last reported meeting between Xi and Gates was in 2015, when they met on the sidelines of the Boao Forum in Hainan Province. In early 2020, Xi wrote a letter to Gates thanking him and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for pledging aid to China including $5 million for the country’s fight against COVID-19.
A number of foreign CEOs have visited China since its reopening early this year, but most of them have mainly met with government ministers.
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