Microsoft founder Bill Gates followed in the footsteps of Tesla’s Elon Musk by making a trip to Beijing this week, arriving on Wednesday and meeting with dictator Xi Jinping on Friday.
Gates said he wanted to enlist China’s help with anti-poverty, health care, and climate change initiatives conducted by his charity foundation.
“Solving problems like climate change, health inequity and food insecurity requires innovation. From developing malaria drugs to investing in climate adaptation, China has a lot of experience in that. We need to unlock that kind of progress for more people around the world,” Gates said via Twitter upon arriving in Beijing.
Apparently undeterred by the lamentable results of previous biological research grants to China, Gates announced $50 million in additional funding over the next five years for a joint disease research project with Tsinghua University and the municipal government of Beijing. Beijing officials have agreed to match the Gates donation.
The Gates Foundation said the Global Health Drug Discovery Institution (GHDDI) “primarily focuses on developing new drugs for communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, which have a significant impact on women, children, people living with HIV/AIDS, and other vulnerable populations.”
GHDDI director Dr. Sheng Ding, who is also a pharmaceutical sciences professor at Tsinghua University, said:
The renewed strong support from the Beijing Municipal Government, Tsinghua University, and the Gates Foundation is vital for the continued success of our institute. In addition to accomplishing our missions of discovering new drugs and knowledge, cultivating new talent, and advocating for global health, we strive for sustainable development in this new phase.
Gates gave a speech at the GHDDI office in Beijing on Thursday, praising China for its “significant gains reducing poverty and improving health outcomes.”
“I’m hopeful China can play an even bigger role in addressing the current challenges, particularly those facing African countries,” he said.
Gates heaped praise on China for going from 300,000 malaria deaths a year in the 1950s to certification as effectively free of malaria by the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) in 2021. He thanked Chinese scientists for “building on this legacy by developing next-generation solutions to help eradicate malaria worldwide.”
“China has invaluable experience to share from its own successes in health, agriculture, nutrition, and poverty reduction. And it has talent,” Gates said.
Gates’ meeting with Xi on Friday was the Chinese tyrant’s first face-to-face conversation with a foreign CEO in several years, as he avoided traveling or holding such meetings throughout the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
Xi’s underling, Premier Li Qiang, has been handling meetings with foreign executives as China attempts to win back businesses that abandoned the country during its coronavirus lockdowns and heavy-handed crackdown on the tech industry. Li’s effort stumbled last month when China unleashed a wave of raids on foreign firms that were collecting accurate information about the faltering Chinese economy that Beijing would prefer to keep secret.
According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Xi and Gates last spoke on the sidelines of the Boao business and political forum in Hainan in 2015, where they “discussed views on enhancing public health service and poverty reduction.” Xi met with Gates again in Seattle during his first state visit to America later in 2015.
The regime in Beijing eagerly reciprocated Gates’ affections.
Xi on Friday described the American billionaire as “an old friend” and “the first American friend I met in Beijing this year” after they spoke at the Diaoyutai state guesthouse in Beijing, a lavish facility normally used for meetings between Chinese Communist Party officials and visiting heads of state.
Xi said he looked forward to establishing stronger ties between his authoritarian regime and the Gates Foundation.
“I often say the foundation of U.S.-China relations lies with its people. I place my hopes on the American people,” Xi said, implicitly setting low expectations for this weekend’s scheduled visit by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken – who was chewed out via telephone by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Wednesday for allegedly meddling in China’s internal affairs and jeopardizing its security.
“With the current global situation, we can carry out various activities beneficial to our two countries and people, activities that benefit humanity as a whole,” Xi said.
Gates said he was “honored” to meet with Xi.
“We’ve always had great conversations and we’ll have a lot of important topics to discuss today. I was very disappointed I couldn’t come during the last four years so it’s very exciting to be back,” he said.
Chinese state media slobbered over Gates in a flurry of articles on Friday. The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times hailed him as a visionary whose “enthusiasm for China” was a welcome change from the “negativity” of Western governments.
After wailing at great length about how Western media keeps reporting bad news about China’s sputtering economy, the Global Times praised Gates and other CEOs for remaining optimistic about China’s prospects.
“Those with ideologically tinted glasses tend to focus only on the difficulties and completely ignore the opportunities behind them. The root cause of their short-sightedness and misjudgment is the misguided attempt to pander to a political atmosphere of being tough on China in exchange for attention,” the Chinese paper moaned.
The Global Times also applauded Gates for pledging another $50 million to the GHDDI, citing it as evidence of his “willingness to continue to cooperate with China.”
The editors contrasted the “warm welcome” extended to Gates and other American tech executives with the “hostile U.S. approach toward China, with endless crackdowns on Chinese businesses and executives” and supposedly nefarious efforts to “decouple” from China after it unleashed the Wuhan coronavirus on the world.
“Many in China have grown suspicious and even annoyed about the U.S.’ two-faced approach toward China,” the Global Times huffed, explicitly contrasting Gates’ red-carpet reception in Beijing with the much cooler reception Blinken can expect this weekend, “seeking dialogue with Chinese officials and vowing to avoid confrontation, while continuing to stir up tension with China as part of its containment strategy.”