Mr. Zuckerberg, China won't unblock Facebook just because you speak Chinese

On October 22, 2014 in China Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg attracted the eyeballs from around the world by delivering an interactive session at China’s top university Tsinghua by running the whole 30 minute session in Chinese Putonghua.

Question is, is this huge reaction, mostly outside of China, something that Mr. Zuckerberg had wanted to see by spending time to do?

As a very creative public relations campaign (with an eye on his blocked facebook.com), this is a “having-nothing-to-lose” type of thing where even if it doesn’t work for his true China ambitions – and it indeed won’t work - it can create a lot of buzz in the social media space – and it certainly has.

And, wow, he even got the opportunity to join the likes of Apple’s Tim Cook (who has his own regulatory hurdles to tackle as well), as members of the Tsinghua University Advisory Board members, in a high level official meeting with one of the very top Chinese leaders - Politburo member Wang Qishan (who happens to be in charge of the Communist Party's anti-corruption drive). How wonderful.

However, this won’t solve any of Facebook’s problems in China.

Following the chat session at Tsinghua University - China's MIT - the world media seemed to have been fascinated by Mr Zukerberg’s ability to crack the talk in his “laowai” style, a bit ill-toned Chinese that even impressed a full-house of local Chinese students. But for those students, most of them haven’t had an opportunity to meet with perhaps one “celebrity” local entrepreneur such as Alibaba’s Jack Ma. Of course they were cheering when they faced the leader of a global social media giant. So they would ask him about the importance of the Internet.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s answer? “Internet creates work opportunities and economic development. Very important.” I guess China has had more than enough of those, doesn’t it.

In the following days China’s Weibo, the so-called Chinese version of Twitter, which is also blocked in China, is full of young people’s posts that ask if Mr. Zuckerberg’s high profile activities suggested facebook.com will soon be ushered into this vast country’s virtual space.

Well, in that, Mr. Zuckerberg can live his own “China dream”.

But it could be a very distant dream. He may not know the fact that when a consumer buys a mobile handset from a mainland China telecom operator, the facebook.com was blocked as a factory setting in the hardware. That means, even when you take the phone out of China, you still can’t load facebook.com’s social media accounts.

Let’s look at what Mr. Zuckerberg said in his own (Chinese) words: “We’re already in China. We help Chinese companies grow their customers abroad. They use Facebook ads to find more customers. For example, Lenovo used Facebook ads to sell its new phone. In China I also see economic growth. We admire it. We want to help other parts of the world connect to China, such as large cities, national parks, (in English) um, yeah.”

Mr. Zuckerberg is perhaps on the right track. For any foreign company, if you want to really succeed, you need to look at ways to make your business ambitions compatible to the “great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics” and contribute to such cause.

Helping Chinese companies go abroad – sounds great. But that perhaps is not what Facebook was created for. Help other parts of the world connect to China – I wonder if Mr. Zuckerberg asked Mr. Wang Qishan in person if China wants that during their meeting in Beijing!

That being said, Facebook is not without opportunities in China.

Here are a couple potential options, or scenarios:

No.1: A facebook.com.cn with censorship. Can do?We don't need to be a computer graduate to believe this is certainly technically doable. Let’s do friendship, share great food (as Mr. Zuckerberg said one of the reasons he learned Chinese is to appreciate Chinese culture through the language), talk about great holiday experiences. Oh! Very importantly, he needs to develop the website into a brand new Chinese version before his audience can really get onboard. No sensitive words, and China based server, please.

No.2: Establish a joint venture with or buy into an existing Chinese social media site. If Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t mind sacrificing a little bit of his facebook.com domain and logo in his favorite blue color, this is a great approach through which he can apply facebook’s technology and styles to its Chinese partner, and at least he can share some revenue. While at this side of the Pacific his Chinese partner can enjoy a big and bigger success, Mr. Zuckerberg can happily roll down his screen to the bottom of his Chinese partner’s website to see it is “powered by facebook.com”. Why not?

In China, unlike in almost anywhere else in the world, the Internet doesn't just belong to the space of technology, but more to a little something called ideology. (So does education, by the way.) Besides tackling Chinese language, is Mr. Zuckerberg ready for that slightly bigger challenge?