It’s an intriguing question: At what point does one of America’s richest men giving $50 million to the country’s number one geopolitical rival amount to a national security threat? Billionaire Bill Gates on June 15 announced he was shelling out $50 million as part of a partnership with “a notorious Chinese Communist Party-controlled university that conducts research for the nation’s military,” as The Washington Free Beacon put it.
“Gates unveiled the partnership during a speech in Beijing….” The WFB reports. “The $50 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will fund a research partnership with Tsinghua University, which holds ‘secret-level security credentials’ for classified military research, trains students for China’s nuclear weapons program, and has allegedly carried out cyberattacks for the Chinese government, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.”
“I am very happy to see you. We haven’t seen each other for more than three years… and you are an old friend of ours,” China President Xi Jinping told Gates at a June 16 meeting, People’s Daily, official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, reported. It was not merely public relations. Gates’s cozy ties to the tyrannical Beijing regime go back years.
Xi to Bill: Thanks for All the Money
In January, Gates praised the increasing influence the Asian communist superpower has acquired on the world stage. “I tend to see China’s rise as a huge win for the world,” he asserted at an event in Australia. “If you ask US politicians: ‘Hey, would you like the Chinese economy to shrink by 20% or grow by 20%?’ I’m afraid they would vote that ‘Yeah, let’s immiserate those people,’ not understanding that for the global economy, the invention of cancer drugs (and) the solution of climate change, we’re all in this together.”
Bill Gates and Xi Jinping (Photo by Yin Bogu/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Xi has good reason to refer to Gates as a longtime pal. In 2020, the Red ruler penned a letter to the internationalist “philanthropist,” thanking the Gates Foundation for donating $100 million to construct a “global response” to the coronavirus pandemic. A significant chunk of that money pile went to Chinese government health agencies.
“I deeply appreciate the act of generosity of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and your letter of solidarity to the Chinese people at such an important moment,” Xi wrote to Gates, Indian newspaper The Statesman reported.
In 2019, Gates appeared on communist state media to proclaim that the “US-China relationship is the most important relationship in the world.”
What Bill Gates Aids and Abets
Even more disturbing is how Gates has helped smooth the way for China to solidify its growing footprint inside America. When Xi made an official visit to Washington state in 2015 for talks with Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee, “he also met privately with Bill and Melinda Gates,” a posting on the Washington State China Relations Council (WSCRE) notes.
What is the Council?
“Founded in 1979 following the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, the Council is the oldest nongovernmental organization advocating at the state level for increased trade connections with the People’s Republic,” its website declares. “The Council’s membership comprises over 100 companies, financial institutions, ports, municipal governments, institutions of higher education, and cultural organizations. Their support enables the Council to execute its mission of strengthening the Washington State-China relationship, while enhancing broader bilateral U.S.-China ties.”
Gates Foundation Deputy Director, China Country Office, Jeff Hall sits on the Council’s Board of Directors, which also includes executives from Boeing, Starbucks, the Port of Seattle and Washington State University. Washington conducts massive trade with China, and aerospace and other militarily sensitive industries play a significant part. The WSCRC is an enthusiastic cheerleader for these activities.
“The erosion in U.S.-China relations has had a punishing effect on our state’s economy,” Council Executive Director J. Norwell Coquillard mournfully wrote in an April 2021 op-ed in The Seattle Times. “In 2020, Washington state exports to China were just $3.5 billion, down from $14.6 billion (adjusted for inflation) in 2018. Non-aerospace exports fell more than 27% in real terms in 2019 before rebounding 15% in 2020. Most notably, export sales of aircraft to China fell from an average of $11.7 billion per year (adjusted for inflation) in the years 2014-2018 to zero in 2019.”
Coquillard knew who to blame for the fall-off. “Many of the issues raised by the Trump administration, from weak intellectual property enforcement to unfair trade practices, were longstanding and legitimate concerns among the business community. But the approach, including tariffs and a go-it-alone strategy, was incoherent, haphazard and ineffective,” he lamented.
Note how the Council director emphasized his displeasure over reduced US aircraft sales to China. This despite the fact that the Chinese have been rapidly expanding their air force in recent years with the transparent goal of overtaking US military capabilities.
China has also been scaling up its rocketry industry, again with military purposes aimed at the US in mind. Yet this did not stop Gov. Inslee, a 2020 Democrat presidential candidate, from going on state-run TV to urge Chinese nationals to come to Washington and take advantage of its aerospace and rocketry industries.
“We’re emphasizing the positive by bringing potential venture capital for China to grow businesses here, to create jobs in my state. We’re emphasizing the possible by opening up markets for companies that I have today that provide some high-tech services…. We have a company here that provides IT services to Chinese aerospace companies, for instance,” Inslee told CGTN in a shocking 2015 interview.
When asked why Chinese companies should seek out the Evergreen State, Inslee replied:
“Because of our great growth in computer science, we now have biotechnology, bioinformatics, aerospace, rocketry, global health, video gaming. And what we’re finding we’re reaching critical mass where those industries are giving you a portfolio of intellectual talent that’s really unsurpassed.”
One year earlier, in 2014, Inslee and Gates served as keynote speakers at a forum meant to promote Chinese business activity in Washington.
Bill Gates (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for TIME)
“Gov. Jay Inslee today responded to news that the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA), Asia’s premier economic forum, will host its first North American conference in Seattle,” an official release from the governor’s office read. “BFA has confirmed Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Inslee, as keynote speakers.”
“The BFA Seattle event comes on the heels of a 2013 trade mission that brought Gov. Inslee and more than 100 Washington state delegates to China to strengthen the state’s relationship with its largest trading partner,” the statement continued. “China alone accounted for $11.6 billion — roughly 15 percent — of Washington state exports last year.”
The Boao Forum was founded by China in 2001 and is headquartered in Beijing.
This is the tangled pro-China web that Bill Gates is feverishly weaving. Whether it be enormous cash outlays to universities connected to the Chinese military complex or partnership with trade groups and political officials in Washington eager to sell military technology to Beijing, it is fair to ask when the pursuit of a globalist agenda crosses over to a threat to American national security.
