According to CCTV, President Xi Jinping will meet Bill Gates in Beijing on Friday.
First international entrepreneur meeting for Xi in years. China’s pandemic ban prohibited him from traveling abroad for nearly three years. According to Reuters, meetings were planned.
On Wednesday, the Microsoft (MSFT.O) co-founder and philanthropist visited Beijing for the first time since 2019 to speak at the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Beijing local government, which founded the institute with Tsinghua University, provided $50 million to improve drug research.
To focus on global health, education, and climate change, Gates resigned from Microsoft’s board in 2020.
At the 2015 Boao Summit in Hainan province, Xi and Gates last met. Xi wrote to Gates in early 2020 to thank him and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for giving $5 million towards China’s COVID-19 fight.
Since China reopened this year, numerous multinational CEOs have visited with Chinese ministers.