Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates met Xi Jinping on Friday, in one of the first contacts between a high-profile US business figure and China’s president in recent years amid rising geopolitical tensions.
The meeting, in which Xi referred to Gates as an “old friend”, came ahead of US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s expected visit to Beijing this weekend, which was initially postponed in February by a dispute over a suspected Chinese spy balloon.
Xi noted that Gates was the first “American friend” he had met this year and stressed the importance of in-person exchanges to US-China relations.
Blinken’s trip could herald a tentative reopening of bilateral diplomatic and business dialogue. Ties have been strained in recent months despite Xi and US president Joe Biden agreeing to set a “floor” under the relationship at their last meeting at the G20 summit in Indonesia in November.
But the countries have made efforts to stabilise relations and improve dialogue in recent weeks. Chinese commerce minister Wang Wentao recently met his counterpart Gina Raimondo, on the first visit by a senior Chinese official to Washington since 2020. Wang also met US trade representative Katherine Tai in Detroit.
Last month, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan met China’s top foreign policy official Wang Yi in Vienna, and CIA director Bill Burns made a clandestine trip to Beijing.
Blinken will be the highest-ranking Biden administration official to visit China, but it was not confirmed whether he would meet Xi.
One executive at a US company who asked to remain anonymous cautioned against reading too much into Xi’s meeting with Gates, who stepped down from Microsoft’s board in 2020 and was visiting China in his capacity as a philanthropist.
Gates wrote on Twitter that he planned to visit partners of his charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with whom he has been “working on global health and development challenges” for more than 15 years.
Xi said China was willing to continue to strengthen co-operation with the Gates Foundation, according to a statement.
But China also warned the US on Friday against “vicious competition” as it pursued dialogue ahead of Blinken’s visit. “The US cannot ask for communication while damaging China’s interests,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said. “The US cannot say one thing and do another thing.”
Gates’s trip followed a series of recent visits by prominent US chief executives as they re-evaluated their businesses in China.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook visited in March and met senior officials including Xi’s number-two, Premier Li Qiang. Tesla boss Elon Musk and JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon also made journeys to China last month, though neither is known to have met Xi.
US businesses have often been forced to make uncomfortable compromises in pursuit of the world’s biggest consumer market.
While Microsoft historically has a strong position in China — about 90 per cent of personal computers in the country use the Windows operating system — it has not benefited much financially.
The company’s research ties with China’s military-controlled National University of Defense Technology have also come under scrutiny, and its LinkedIn service was pulled from the country in 2021, marking the departure of the last major US social network.
Apple, which manufactures iPhones and other products in China, has faced censure for substandard labour conditions at its suppliers as well as for yielding to Beijing’s demands for local data storage, which raises security concerns, and for the censorship of tens of thousands of apps and services.
