BEIJING, June 16 (TMTPost)— Microsoft Corp’s co-founder Bill Gates called for technology innovations to meet serious global challenges during his first visit to China since 2019.

Source: Visual China

The challenges in the world have never more urgent due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a resurgence of infectious diseases, the worsening impact of climate change, and a hunger crisis in parts of the globe, Gates cautioned in his speech at the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute (GHDDI) on Thursday. However, the Silicon Valley billionaire still feels optimistic for two reasons: one is the amazing progress that occurred when the world prioritized health equity, another is the unprecedented potential of science and technology to solve difficult problems. “As I have said before, I firmly believe that advances in technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), will bring rapid breakthroughs in fields such as health care and education, giving more people access to lifesaving tools and better opportunities for development,” Gates remarked.

In his speech titled The Power of Innovation to Solve Global Challenges, Gates urged the engagement of all parts of society, including governments, academia, business and philanthropy. To solve the increasing complex challenges, “we have to bring the world’s combined expertise to bear”, Gates noted. He stressed China’s huge potential to boost global cooperation in face of worldwide challenges. “Chinese innovators have an important role to play in these global partnerships. China has invaluable experience to share from its own successes in health, agriculture, nutrition, and poverty reduction,” he said, paying tribute to the Nobel Prize winner Tu Youyou, whose work led to today’s leading treatment for malaria, and Yuan Longping, the agronomist also known as the Father of Hybrid Rice. He added that talents across China are working hard to find solutions of the future, including new medicines for malaria and other old diseases, digital models for scaling up highly customized health care and education, crops that can thrive in harsher weather and technologies that improve people’s quality of life but don’t change the climate.

The day Gates delivered his speech saw the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to donate US$50 million to GHDDI over the next five years, a new funding to bolster the institute’s drug discovery capacity. Cofounded by the Gates foundation, the Beijing Municipal Government and Tsinghua University in 2016, GHDDI is the first public-private non-profit institution on innovative research in China. It primarily focuses on developing new drugs for communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. “We will continue to work closely with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Tsinghua University to provide strong support for GHDDI in its endeavors to develop innovative drugs for the most challenging diseases in public health,” said an official at Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission and the Administrative Commission of Zhongguancun Science Park.

Gates has suggested his intention to promote scientific and technological cooperation with Chinese partners the day he landed in Beijing on Wednesday. “Solving problems like climate change, health inequities, and food security requires innovation, and China has extensive experience in that, ranging from developing malarial drugs to investment in climate adaptation. We need to unlock that kind of progress for more people around the world,” the Microsoft founder said in his post at Chinese Twitter-like platform Weibo. Gates will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday in his visit, Reuters reported that day, citing people familiar with the matter. The sources didn’t reveal details including what the two might discuss. Gates and his foundation didn’t respond to the report.

White House didn’t know if Gates has contacted it about his planned meeting with President Xi Jinping, and had no information to give about any conversation with Gates, the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded to a question on Gates’ travel on Wednesday. “I’m sure he can speak for himself about his trip to China”, she added.

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