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How Facebook's Zuckerberg Went From Courting to Criticizing Beijing

Lin Yang

   Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg once embraced China as a key potential
   market for his company. But Beijing never let Facebook operate inside
   its internet firewall, which helped turn Zuckerberg into one of the
   most vocal American technology leaders to speak out against what many
   see as the Chinese Communist Party's threat to internet freedom.

   Now, the internet mogul who studied Chinese and famously hosted China's
   internet chief at Facebook headquarters in 2014, is warning that
   Beijing's policies pose a threat to American technology.

   At a Senate hearing in late July, Zuckerberg told senators that it was
   "well documented that the Chinese government steals technology from
   American companies."

   Growth in Asia, not China

   As of the second quarter of 2020, Facebook had 2.7 billion monthly
   users, making it the world's largest social networking platform by a
   large margin.

   Data over the past few years have shown that the largest user market
   for Facebook is in the Asia-Pacific region.

   A few years ago, as Facebook aggressively expanded overseas, China was
   its top target. Facebook had been banned in China since 2009. If
   Zuckerberg could get the ban lifted, Facebook could quickly gain some
   700 million potential users. Zuckerberg went to great efforts to
   establish ties with Beijing, visiting with top officials and delivering
   a speech in Chinese at Tsinghua University in 2015.

   He posted on Facebook that he was reading a Chinese science fiction
   novel.

   He posted a widely circulated photo of himself running in Tiananmen
   Square on a smoggy day. He also reportedly asked President Xi Jinping
   at a White House dinner to name his then-unborn daughter.

   Facebook around this time became interested in acquiring the video app
   Musical.ly, which focused on the Chinese and American markets. But in
   2017, Chinese technology giant ByteDance successfully acquired the app
   for $800 million and merged it with its TikTok platform. The result was
   a social media sensation, which now boasts around 500 million users
   from 150 different markets.

   Shut out of the Chinese market yet again through ByteDance's
   acquisition of Musical.ly, while facing growing political pressure at
   home over its content moderation policies, Facebook abruptly began to
   change its stance toward China.

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