Asking a mainlander to connect on Facebook is virtually impossible these days, let alone deemed a faux pas, since the Chinese government banned the social media giant throughout the country in 2009. Local social media firms have filled the gap since then--the likes of Sina Weibo and Tencent being the largest.
But Zuckerberg, who isn't keen on giving up, made his point clear as recent as 2015. Saying that leaving out the world's most populous country in trying to connect everyone in the world is a paradox, he continues to see China as a lucrative part of Facebook's plans, The Wall Street Journal reported.
In fact, Zuckerberg has been known to do practically everything just to get a piece of the much-vaunted Chinese social media market. He studied Mandarin, met and hosted several Chinese officials, and even ran through Beijing's Tiananmen Square on a smog-filled day without a mask on.
Several Facebook officials have featured in many of China's leading universities in varying degrees. Zuckerberg himself joined as a board member in the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University, a leading academic institution in the country.
But despite of all those antics, the prospect of Facebook reentering China remains a dim one. And even if it does, it might be too late already. Sina Weibo, Tencent, and all others have dominated a large part of the Chinese social media market share in the absence of Zuckerberg's creation.
Struggles in fulfilling a web of legal tangles, as well as concerns over censorship, characterize Facebook's current attempts to penetrate the Chinese market. That, despite the social media giant's officials committing to play through China's complex social media regulations.
One example is Facebook's development of technology that can censor banned content in China, an attempt to curb uprisings like the Xinjiang Region riots back in 2009, which caused the social media giant's ban. But an attempt to do so may introduce another problem: alienating the rest of its 1.8 billion users.
Facebook's closest attempt to restore its presence in China was in 2015, when the firm secured a permit to establish a representative office in Beijing. But with the permit being valid for only three months, the firm didn't even bother to start. Perhaps Zuckerberg needs more jogging miles throughout the capital.