Facebook CEO Striving To Enter China

Mark Zuckerberg is using his charm to debut in China.

Facebook Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg had an eventful weekend in China recently. Since the news surfaced, the executive got a lot of attention via the local newspaper. However, it is not really known why the executive is so popular in the region and the reason behind his visits is quite easier to guess.

Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged about his visit via a Facebook post that got viral. He made his way to the Tiananmen Square where he was a part of a lot of discussions with the E-commerce giant and founder of Alibaba, Mr. Jack Ma. However, the thing that was much sought after during his visit was his meeting with Liu Yunshan, the propaganda chief in China.

It is quite unusual for a business tycoon belonging to United States to meet the statesmen of China and that even publicly. Mr. Liu is an active member of the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee, which has a lot of power. The meeting was merely discussing the stance of the Chinese executive on the social media laws in the region. It was also highlighting the fact that the United States tech companies and social media giants are willing to adhere to the barriers set by the local government as well as Internet governance.

Since the past couple of years, Mr. Liu is responsible for the extremely censored and state managed social media. Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. are the social media giants which are banned in China. So if Zuckerberg wishes to enter China ever again, it will be only possible by winning over Mr. Liu. The highlight of the meeting was the fact that he wishes to make a comeback in China since the company wishes to capitalize on the market of 668 million users.

The tech giant has been striving to expand its services in regions beyond United States for quite some time now. The conventional market of Facebook is embracing saturation. The company recently debuted Internet.org that was initially coined as Free Basics app. The service was aimed to offer free Internet access to emerging nations. The company established collaborations with native wireless network carriers to penetrate the service. However, the service was only encompassing Facebook and a bunch of other websites thus issues regarding net neutrality surfaced.

Facebook wished to capitalize on a market it had wished to capitalize on since a long time via Free Basics. However Telecom Regulatory Authority in India issued orders to put a halt to the service. So now FB is targeting China as the next potential market.

China is said to have the largest numbers of Internet users thus either the officials will have to device ways to get the ban lifted or force the authorities to offer them some special treatment.

Hence in a nutshell, Facebook is eyeing a great opportunity since the masses in China desire for the redemption of the services. However, it will not be that easy to persuade them.