VSike a rockstar on a world tour, Bill Gates is welcomed by his fans. ” [Bill Gates] has always been friendly to China… Welcome! When friends visit us, we welcome them with good wine! », exclaimed a user on the Sina Weibo messenger, according to the official China.org website. And, as a star, the founder of Microsoft had the rare privilege, Friday, June 16, of a face-to-face interview with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
He does not come empty-handed since the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will donate an additional $50 million (45.6 million euros) to the medical research institute he created in Beijing in 2016, with the help of the city and Tsinghua University. He congratulated China for the success of its fight against malaria in the country and urged it to redouble its efforts to help Africa where his foundation is very active.
These outbursts of friendliness and cooperation obviously contrast with the extreme tension in relations between Washington and Beijing. Not a day goes by without an American parliamentarian suspecting China of misdeeds and enjoining the country to kick Chinese interests out of the United States.
Deleterious diplomatic climate
Recently it was the social network TikTok who paid the price, with a hearing of the CEO before Congress, while, Thursday, June 15, a subsidiary of Google specializing in cybercrime revealed a massive computer espionage campaign targeting several government agencies. from different countries.
It is in this deleterious climate that a few doves are trying to defuse the situation. In addition to Bill Gates, the CEOs of Apple, Tim Cook, and Amazon, Jeff Bezos, were able to speak with the Chinese leader and, in recent months, the bosses of Tesla, JP Morgan Chase, Starbucks or General Motors, have found their way back to Beijing after years of confinement.
It must be said that a good part of the current sluggishness of the Chinese economy comes from the decline in its exports, to the United States in particular. And for the American business, the Chinese potential remains considerable, in consumption as in production.
Have businessmen been heard in Washington? In any case, the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, lands in Beijing, Sunday June 18, for a first visit at this level since 2018. No strategic turning point to be expected, warns Washington. Just a welcome respite for a world of business and philanthropy that struggles to accept the idea of a partition of the world.