Good evening.Thank you, Professor Lynn. It's great to be here today. Beta has an incrediblehistory, and I'm sure next year is you celebrate your one hundred and twentiethyear anniversary? you'll get to look back on the incredible contributions thatyou've made to this country. I've been coming to China since the early onethousand nine hundred and ninety nine. initially, as part of my work atMicrosoft. It was ten years ago that I was privileged to be named an honorarytrustee here. It may die. I remember what a great time I had in two thousandand eight when I was here watching the Olympic Table tennis semi finals betweenChina and South Korea. As I'm sure you remember, China took the gold medal inevery category and singles women's singles Men's and women's teams event thatwas on top of two silvers and two bronze medals. For someone who is a big tabletennis fan that was pretty incredible to witness. And that highlights in oneway with incredible potential, China has China is on a quest for excellence requestnot only to improve itself but to contribute to the whole world. As Chinaseconomy is maturing, it's making bold and difficult decisions on things likeenergy and pollution and its assuming a greater role in critical issues likeclimate and development. And this matters now more than ever, as the world isnavigating the time of change and uncertainty. In some rich countries, there'sskepticism about globalization. The results of the U. S presidential electionin the Brics people in the U K both seemed to underscore wise of turning inwardon issues like migration, security and perhaps even global development. It'sgreat to see China stepping up to engage even more with other countries. It'sgreatly equipped to do so. No other country has accomplished what China hasachieved in the last few decades, breaking the relentless cycle of poverty anddisease for hundreds of millions of people, while modernising its economy at ascale and speed unprecedented in human history. Although no one's expectingChina to fill a gap in development aid from wealthy countries, it has made avery smart commitment to triple its commitment to African development. Chinahas long understood that helping other countries lift themselves out of povertycreates a stable and secure world for people everywhere. And by encouraginginvestment through innovative financing mechanisms. Like the China AfricaDevelopment Fund, China is strengthening not only Africa's economic capacitybut also over time. the markets for Chinese goods. It's great to see President,she's commitment to eliminate extreme poverty here in China by two thousand andtwenty. China did a great job of lifting millions out of poverty, but progresshas been uneven. Forty three million people still live in extreme poverty. Arefoundation looks forward to a new partnership with China that will focus oninnovative ideas to bring this number down to zero, working on nutrition,health care in rural areas and also are finding ways to increase financialservices for the poor. Of course, China is not only striving to reach newheights here at home, it's using its own experience, fighting poverty anddisease to help other countries tackle similar challenges. When I was inBeijing a few years ago, Vice Premier Wang Yong said something that stay withme, he said Africa today is our yesterday. Now China is using the lessons it'slearned to usher in a new tomorrow for Africa too. This is a pretty incredibletime to be a young person in China. Your generations entrance into theworkforce will coincide with your country's rise as a center of global progressand innovation. The world's eyes are on China and it is a new generation comesof age. The world's eyes are specifically on all of you. So I want to spend therest of my comments focusing on four areas where I think there are excitingopportunities to use your education, your passion and opportunities to unlockmore amazing progress for both China and the world. Specifically, health,agriculture, energy and technology. First, help. When my wife, Melinda, and Istarted the Gates Foundation seventeen years ago, we asked ourselves How can weuse our financial resources to make the biggest impact? It didn't take long torealize that improving health deserve to be at the top of the list. When peoplearen't healthy, they can't learn in school or be productive, productive atwork. they're unable to seize economic opportunities or do any of the thingsthey need to lift themselves out of poverty. Melinda and I saw the example ofChina creating a better life for its people, and it inspired us to see if therewas a way to support China's progress over the last decade. Our work here hasfocused on several of the most persistent domestic health challenges,specifically reducing the incidence of tuberculosis and tobacco relateddiseases, preventing HIV transmission and improving treatment and care forpeople living with AIDS. We're continuing to support progress in these areas,but all work in China is also evolving. along with China's new priorities. For example,China has a great opportunity to be a global leader in health innovation. Noone exemplifies the strong history here better than professor to you. You, asI'm sure most of you know. Professor Tu's debate are graduate and the firstwoman in China to win a Nobel Prize. She was of course, recognized for herdiscovery of artemisinin, the powerful message medicine used to treat malaria.It was one of the most significant breakthroughs in tropical medicine in thetwentieth century, and it saved millions of lives. With its rich pool oftalented scientists, scientists and its capacity to develop new drugs andvaccines, China was a clear choice for us to locate our new Global Health DrugDiscovery Institute. This institute, a collaboration between our foundation,the Beijing Government and Shanghai University will help speed the discoveryand development of new lifesaving medicines. I have a chance earlier today tomeet with some of the training scientists who are driving cutting edgeresearch. For example, Dr Her Roux is the chief scientist at the Center forDrug Evaluation for the Chinese Food and Drug Administration. His work and thereforms being carried out by his agency will create an environment whereinnovation will thrive. Well, we are working with the CFTC aid to bring in moreexperts like Dr Rouille to help improve its regulatory capacity so that moreChinese health products can be made accessible to the entire world, includingdeveloping countries. One area that China has an incredible chance to lead isboth reducing the case of malaria and eventually, eradicating malaria. WithChinese leadership, we have a chance to make malaria the third widescale humandisease. After smallpox and soon polio to be wiped off the face of the earth. Alittle more than a century ago, malaria was the leading cause of death innearly every country on Earth. There's been great progress since then, andChina is on track to eliminate malaria completely in the next few years. Butmore than three point two billion people around the world still live in areaswhere there is significant risk of malaria infection. To achieve the goal ofglobal eradication, we need to build on Professor Tu's discovery of artemisininand develop more powerful tools like a single dose cure. I'm better ways toblock transmission of malaria from mosquitoes to humans. China has thepotential to develop these new high impact solutions at a very low cost thatthe developing world can afford. We can start today by doing the elimination ofmalaria in places like the Mekong River basin, and in the southern part ofAfrica. Drawing on lessons learned from its own experience, China can helpensure that every family has bed nets to protect them from infection. and itcan help countries strengthen their health and disease systems to betterdiagnose, treat and prevent future cases of malaria. That's health. The secondarea, where I believe China can accelerate global progress is agriculture.Since one thousand, nine hundred and seventy five Chinese agricultural productivityhas grown at a rate of twelve percent per year, four times the annual rate ofgrowth in Africa. That is not only fed a large growing population, but its leadto better nutrition and health, higher real incomes, falling poverty rates andmore labour available to other sectors to drive Chinese economic development.There are many factors that account for China's recent green Revolution. One ofthe most significant is its commitment to agricultural innovation and the workof people like professor yawn, Long Ping, A crop scientist at HunanAgricultural University, Professor Ruan developed hybrid rice varieties thatincrease crop yield over twenty percent. China's continuing advances in ricecan be of enormous benefit to the millions of smallholder farmers in subSaharan Africa, many of whom today are barely growing enough to feed theirfamilies and who faced more difficult weather conditions in the decades ahead.Since two thousand and eight, our foundation support of work by the ChineseAcademy of Agricultural Sciences and others to develop new variety, surprisethat, when cost with domestic varieties in countries like Senegal, Tanzania,Rwanda will result in high yielding stress, tolerant crops that will boostfarmer yields and income. But to feed the entire planet, we need to do evenmore. One of the most exciting efforts is research by Chinese scientists tosupercharge the basic process of photosynthesis itself. This wouldsignificantly increase crop yields, while reducing demand for irrigation andfertilizer. Also supporting research by Chinese scientists to improve thehealth of livestock, which plays a vital role in food security and the ruraleconomy of developing countries were working with the Ministry of Commerce,Mofcom and the Ministry of Agriculture, to promote sustainable agriculturaldevelopment throughout Africa. That brings me to what I think of as China'sthird opportunity. Energy innovation. China is already one of the world, theworld's leaders in renewable energy, and it recently announced that it willspend three hundred and sixty billion on renewable power sources by twothousand and twenty. This will pay off handsomely for China domestically, andit's a great long term business opportunity. There are challenges sorting outthe right mix of technologies, managing the reliability in the new largetransmission grid. All of this will be needed to manage in a very complex wayto meet the growing energy needs. One element of this system will be the nextgeneration of nuclear technology. This fourth generation can be dramaticallysafer and substantially cheaper and solved a lot of the challenges with today'snuclear energy, I work with a company terrapower that's partnering with ChinaNational Nuclear Corporation and other Chinese companies to provide one way tomake this a reality. I've had the opportunity to meet several times withPresident Xi and I'm encouraged by his commitment in a number of areas,including his leadership at the Paris climate talks. China was one of twenty tocountries that committed to doubling their investments in clean energyinnovation over the next five years. I'm also working with Jack Ma and otherChinese investors who have pledged to invest a billion dollars in thedevelopment of early stage energy technology. so we can move the best ideasfrom the lab to the marketplace. A fourth area where I know China has greatpotential is software. During my time at Microsoft, we were so impressed by thequality of computer scientists and developers coming out of the universities herethat we established one of our first research labs in Beijing almost twentyyears ago. today, it's Microsofts largest research center outside the UnitedStates. It's a phenomenal place with two hundred of the world's top researchersand developers. and more than three hundred visiting scientists and fellows.The best thing is that researchers are free to explore what their mostpassionate about, which leads to breakthroughs, like shall being a naturallanguage chat bot that simulates human conversation. Some of you may have hadconversations with shopping on Weibo are senior weather forecast on TV or readher column in the Chin Zang Evening. News. So being has attracted forty fivemillion followers and is quite skilled at multitasking. and I've got I've heardshe's gotten good enough at sensing users' emotional state that she can evenhelp during a relationship breakup. Besides developing new technologies forMicrosoft, the Beijing Lab also help software entrepreneurs who have greatproduct ideas and need help scaling up their business. In the last few years,most of the one hundred and twenty five companies that have graduated from theaccelerator program were able to secure additional funding, and three of thosestartups have gone public. The Beijing lab supports up and coming softwaredevelopers and we've also hired more than five thousand in terms here. You'llbe happy to know that we've recruited more students in the last three yearsfrom Bayda than from Chinois. Butt.
But it's a slimlead,.so those of you here in computer science will have to keep up your goodwork. Technology is also helping to power the philanthropic sector in China.It's a growing sector on one with immense potential. in two thousand, andfifteen people contributed one thousand one hundred and sixty six million RMBto causes. they care about using the four largest online donation platforms,and the success of nine nine charity Day started a few years ago by ten. Senshows what is possible when people have an easy way to get involved and getback. In just three days last year, six million people, people like you raisedthree hundred and five million RMB in support of more than thirty six hundredprojects. So this is just one example of how philanthropy is beginning toblossom here in China. A lot of the most successful entrepreneurs, includingJack Ma Pony Ma, Charles Chen, get on in new game. Shang have helped create theworld's second largest pool of individual wealth, and now they're taking someof their time to get involved and start giving back. The new charity law thattook effect in fact, last September, begins to open up more opportunities forpeople to be engaged. People are coming together. Events like China's sixsocial good summit held here at Bay Dock last fall. Some of you may decide towork for Ngos that are making life better for the most vulnerable in society.But even if you don't end up doing that or make big financial donations, thereare many other ways of getting involved. Just learning about something lendingyour voice are volunteering. Your time is important. What an incrediblemotivating thing that is the belief that you can make the world a better place,and there has never been a better time. As the geopolitical current shift,China has an opportunity to advance progress on the most urgent challenges theworld faces. China's leaders are embracing this opportunity, but it will be upto China's youth to carry it forward. In the last few decades, millions ofpeople in China have achieved professional and financial success. I'm sure allof you will too, and it's a great thing. I certainly enjoyed all of my work atMicrosoft and I wouldn't trade it for anything. but now I've also had theopportunity and my philanthropic work to meet people who apply their talents andpassion and fill in volunteer in giving back ways. Many of these people areimpatient to see the world improved, but there are optimistic that it willpeople who believe in the possibility of change and are eager to do somethingabout it. Doctors courageous enough to risk their own lives to save the livesof others suffering from Ebola entrepreneurs, using their ingenuity to deliverlifesaving drugs for remote villages by drone and people of all walks of lifewho volunteer their time to help the homeless or mentor a child at risk. Maybeyou're the person who wants to ensure that every child growing up in povertyhas the nutrition they need to do their best in school. Maybe you want todevelop the next vaccine that protects everyone from malaria. Maybe you wantedto sign the battery that lights people's desks at night or the mobiletechnology that will let people start new businesses. No matter what yourambition is to improve the world. This is the best time and the best place todo it. and all of you have a great opportunity. I look forward to seeing whatyou'll achieve. Thank you.
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