Lucas Peng Lu ’16
On Wednesday October 22, 2014, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook spoke in front of a group of students at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. To the shock of the audience, what came out of Mark’s mouth was not English, but rather Mandarin Chinese. In the 30-minute Q&A session, Mark covered topics ranging from early days of Facebook to technology innovation entirely in Mandarin.
Unfortunately for Zuckerberg, Facebook has been banned in China for over five years. Other popular websites, such as Google, Twitter, Bing, Wordpress, DropBox, and Vimeo, are still inaccessible in China unless the user can bypass the “Great Firewall” with virtual private networks. In fact, Zuckerberg himself had to use a virtual private network to upload the video of him speaking Mandarin to his Facebook account.
The unfortunate reality for Facebook is that it must comply with the government’s censorship laws in order to do business in China. Back in 2009, Facebook ran into conflict with the Chinese government when Xinjiang’s independent activists communicated with Urumqi protestors through Facebook, and the website was shortly banned thereafter. During the recent pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong, the Chinese government also blocked Instagram, a Facebook asset. The Chinese government is extremely staunch in its policy to limit public exposure to sensitive topics, such as Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and Dalai Lama, and prevent criticism of the government. China’s iron fist over information flow on social media originates from the Golden Shield Project, also famously known as the Great Firewall of China. The censorship and surveillance project involves 30,000 to 50,000 police members who are employed full time to monitor all aspects of the online web. The only reason why local social media platforms that are similar to Facebook, such as the widely used Ren Ren, still exist today is that they actively filter and censor content themselves.
Despite tough regulatory hurdles, Zuckerberg is still eyeing China as a potential market for Facebook to expand in. Official statistics show that there are over 1 billion Internet users in China, and 870 million users access the web from their mobile devices. Because Facebook mainly generates revenue from advertisements on web and mobile, mainland China is a massive and lucrative market for the company. Facebook signed a three-year lease during spring 2013 to occupy 8,600 square feet of prime office space in Beijing’s business district. In addition to office expansion, Zuckerberg was recently nominated to be on the board of China’s top business school, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management. Zuckerberg’s recent activities in China, although minor, reflect his intention to re-establish Facebook in the Chinese market in the near future.
Going forward, Facebook’s fate in China depends on how much Zuckerberg and the Chinese government is willing to compromise on sensitive issues, such as censorship laws. Additionally, local players, such as Ren Ren, may put extra pressure on the government to prevent Facebook from entering the lucrative market. Thus, Zuckerberg will continue to face a steep uphill battle as he strives to push Facebook into China.
Sources:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/16/chinas_social_media_underground_twitter
http://www.cfr.org/china/media-censorship-china/p11515
http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/09/29/can-chinas-social-media-censorship-keep-the-lid-on-hong-kong-protests/