New Delhi (India), 15th June 2023: Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp, is scheduled to see Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday during his visit to China.
The encounter will be Xi’s first in recent years with a foreign private entrepreneur. According to the sources, the meeting could be one-on-one. A third source confirmed they would meet, but gave no further specifics.
The sources did not specify what the two might talk about. Gates tweeted on Wednesday that he had arrived in Beijing for the first time since 2019 and that he would meet with partners from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who had been working on global health and development concerns.
Gates resigned from Microsoft’s board of directors in 2020 to focus on philanthropic efforts in global health, education, and climate change. In 2008, he resigned from his full-time senior position at Microsoft.
The meeting would mark the end of Xi’s recent sabbatical from meeting international private entrepreneurs and business executives, after the Chinese president ceased travelling abroad for nearly three years due to the pandemic.
Several international CEOs have visited China since it reopened in early this year, but the majority have met with government ministers.
Premier Li Qiang met with a group of international CEOs in March, including Apple’s Tim Cook, while a source told Reuters that Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, met with Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang last month.
Foreign business sentiment towards China, on the other hand, has shifted cautiously as Sino-US tensions rise and Xi focuses the country’s attention on national security.
Gates’ travel also comes ahead of a long-delayed visit to China by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, scheduled for June 18-19, with the goal of stabilising relations between the world’s two largest economies and strategic competitors.
