Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, said on Wednesday that China’s rise is a “huge win for the world” during an interview with the Lowy Institute, a think tank based in Australia, according to Fox Business.
“I tend to see China’s rise as a huge win for the world,” Gates said, adding that the portion of the Chinese people in the global population today matches their portion of the global economy.
Ties between the U.S. and China have been strained over geopolitical issues – most notably Taiwan – as well as trade disagreements.
Gates, 67, has a fortune worth $103.2 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List today.
When asked about how “bullish” he was on China, he said he does think that “the current mentality of the U.S. to China and which is reciprocated is kind of a lose-lose mentality.”
He said it takes the whole world to work together for the global economy, for the discovery of cancer drugs and for the solution to climate change.
During the interview, Gates also said that the U.S. is politically in a weak state, adding that countries like China need to play a bigger role in world governance, according to Fox Business.
“The current world system is designed around U.S. leadership,” he said, adding that as other countries have gotten richer, some middle-income countries including China and India need to play a stronger role in world governance.
Separately, when asked about who were the powerhouses in global innovation, Mr Gates said the United States was still the world leader.
“The US has this unique advantage that it draws in talented people from all over the world,” he said.
“Whether it is climate technology, curing cancer, curing obesity – there is no country that is going to take that position off the US. It is not like all the smart people are saying ‘let’s go to China and hang out’.”
Mr Gates said countries like China and India were becoming more innovative and were going to play a stronger role in world governance.
“China has gone from being incredibly impoverished in 1980 to being the most wealthy, middle income country,” he said.
“I tend to see China’s rise as a huge win for the world. But I do think the current mentality of the US towards China, which is reciprocated, is a lose-lose situation.”
Artificial Intelligence or AI is the next big tech shift that users can expect in the coming years, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates recently said while interacting with a Reddit user last week. Gates thinks that metaverse and Web3 are revolutionary but not quite as much as AI.
Gates is confident that AI can have a significant impact in the fields of education and healthcare. For instance, it could be used to tutor kids with math and make it interesting. In medicine, AI could help people get medical advice in regions where doctors are not accessible.
