Facebook and Google want China, but China doesn’t want them

Mark Zuckerberg jogs through Tiananmen Square during his 2017 trip to China / Photo credit: Facebook

It has been a busy summer for Facebook and Google. The two Western tech giants, both conspicuously absent from China’s tech scene, have apparently been trying to make inroads into the Middle Kingdom behind the scenes. For Facebook, it was a China innovation hub; for Google, a plan to launch search and news apps in China, nearly a decade after shuttering its Chinese search engine.

Facebook’s China dreams were quickly foiled, as Chinese authorities pulled its subsidiary’s license just hours after news of the plan first broke.

Google fared only slightly better. Initially, Chinese media refuted reports of the company’s imminent return to the country after its eight-year absence, stating that the project has no official approval. But state mouthpiece The People’s Daily left the door open for Google yesterday in an op-ed which said that the firm “is welcome to return to the mainland, but it’s a prerequisite that it must comply with the requirements of the law.”

However, news of the planned return has caused a controversy in Google’s home country, and a bipartisan group of US senators has already written a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai demanding an explanation. Even the company’s own employees weren’t happy.

For both firms, it might all feel a bit like deja vu.

The long road back to China for Facebook

Zuck going on a magic toboggan ride. Facebook’s ride in China has been a bit less smooth / Photo credit: Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been struggling to get his company a foothold in China for nearly a decade now, after access to the service was blocked following high-profile riots in Xinjiang province in 2009.

He has repeatedly met with Chinese authorities, including President Xi Jinping, and sent Facebook executives to government-run tech conferences. He has also made obvious PR overtures, like going for a very public run in smoggy Beijing and offering a yearly Spring Festival greeting video to Chinese internet users in Mandarin. He even reportedly asked Xi to name his firstborn child (the president declined).

It seems none of this has worked. The charm offensive wasn’t even enough to buy his China subsidiary a full 24 hours of life before authorities pulled the plug. Conventional wisdom holds that the key to business success in China lies in one’s relationships and contacts. But after a near-decade of outreach efforts that have reached the highest halls of Chinese power, Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives find themselves in essentially the same place they were nine years ago.

Google: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

Photo credit: bfishadow/Flickr

Google also finds itself in a position remarkably similar to where it was nearly a decade ago. The company chose to withdraw from China’s search industry, ostensibly because it was no longer willing to censor search results.