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

Microsoft's co-founder Bill Gates met President Xi Jinping connected Friday, state media reported without offering immoderate details.

Their gathering comes a time aft the billionaire philanthropist met Beijing's politician to sermon a cause find concern with China.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — which Gates is the co seat of — announced Thursday a $50 cardinal donation implicit the adjacent 5 years into the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute established by his foundation. Beijing's municipal authorities volition lucifer the $50 cardinal investment.

GHDDI chiefly focuses connected processing caller drugs for infectious diseases specified arsenic tuberculosis and malaria, which importantly interaction the world's poorest.

Speaking astatine GHDDI, Gates said there's an urgent request to address a resurgence of infectious diseases, the worsening interaction of clime alteration and a hunger crisis.

"China has made important gains reducing poorness and improving wellness outcomes wrong China. China tin play an adjacent bigger relation successful addressing the existent challenges, peculiarly those facing African countries," Gates said.

The sojourn comes connected the heels of visits to China by different salient tech leaders — specified arsenic Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

It comes days earlier U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is acceptable to get successful Beijing, wherever helium is expected this play to conscionable elder Chinese officials to sermon the value of maintaining unfastened connection betwixt the 2 countries.

This volition beryllium Blinken's archetypal travel to China nether the Biden administration.

The extremity of the concern is to "bolster the institute's cause find capacity" successful collaboration with the Beijing Municipal Government and Tsinghua University, the instauration said.

According to state media Beijing Daily, Beijing's politician Yin Yong praised the GHDDI for its "breakthroughs successful caller years." 

"We connect large value to and volition proceed to vigorously enactment the operation of the R&D center, and are consenting to deepen practice with the Gates Foundation successful the operation and sharing of technological probe platforms, endowment training, etc.," Yin said, according to the statement.

In the 1950s, China had astatine slightest 30 cardinal malaria cases and much than 300,000 malaria deaths each year. But past cases and deaths began to driblet steadily, successful portion due to the fact that of breakthroughs from Chinese scientists, Gates said.

He called Chinese researchers "brilliant" and said helium was anxious to spot however researchers astatine GHDDI, crossed China and the world, lend to planetary advancement successful the years to come.

Beijing appears to beryllium trying to represent itself arsenic a affable concern situation for overseas companies adjacent arsenic tensions with the U.S. authorities continue.

During Musk's sojourn successful May, he met with Chinese vice premier Ding Xuexiang and different apical officials successful China, wherever helium said Tesla was consenting to proceed expanding its concern successful China contempt U.S.-China tensions.

That aforesaid month, Dimon was successful Shanghai for JPMorgan Global China Summit wherever helium called for some economical giants to prosecute with each different to resoluteness disputes.