Bill Gates visits China, hot on heels of Elon Musk, and meets with Xi

Microsoft‘s co-founder Bill Gates met President Xi Jinping on Friday, state media reported without offering any details.

Their meeting comes a day after the billionaire philanthropist met Beijing’s mayor to discuss a drug discovery partnership with China.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — which Gates is the co chair of — announced Thursday a $50 million donation over the next five years into the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute established by his foundation. Beijing’s municipal government will match the $50 million investment.

GHDDI primarily focuses on developing new drugs for infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, which significantly impact the world’s poorest.

Speaking at GHDDI, Gates said there’s an urgent need to address a resurgence of infectious diseases, the worsening impact of climate change and a hunger crisis.

“China has made significant gains reducing poverty and improving health outcomes within China. China can play an even bigger role in addressing the current challenges, particularly those facing African countries,” Gates said.

The visit comes on the heels of visits to China by other prominent tech leaders — such as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

It comes days before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to arrive in Beijing, where he is expected this weekend to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the importance of maintaining open communication between the two countries.

This will be Blinken’s first trip to China under the Biden administration.

The goal of the partnership is to “bolster the institute’s drug discovery capacity” in collaboration with the Beijing Municipal Government and Tsinghua University, the foundation said.

According to state media Beijing Daily, Beijing’s mayor Yin Yong praised the GHDDI for its “breakthroughs in recent years.” 

“We attach great importance to and will continue to vigorously support the construction of the R&D center, and are willing to deepen cooperation with the Gates Foundation in the construction and sharing of scientific research platforms, talent training, etc.,” Yin said, according to the statement.

In the 1950s, China had at least 30 million malaria cases and more than 300,000 malaria deaths each year. But then cases and deaths began to drop steadily, in part because of breakthroughs from Chinese scientists, Gates said.

He called Chinese researchers “brilliant” and said he was eager to see how researchers at GHDDI, across China and the world, contribute to global progress in the years to come.

Beijing appears to be trying to portray itself as a friendly business environment for foreign companies even as tensions with the U.S. government continue.

During Musk’s visit in May, he met with Chinese vice premier Ding Xuexiang and other top officials in China, where he said Tesla was willing to continue expanding its business in China despite U.S.-China tensions.

That same month, Dimon was in Shanghai for JPMorgan Global China Summit where he called for both economic giants to engage with each other to resolve disputes.