Does China Need Facebook?

Mark Zuckerberg is relentless in his campaign to charm China. In the last year, he’s asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to bestow an honorary Chinese name on his unborn daughter (Xi turned down the request); told China’s chief censor that he’s not only reading Xi’s latest book of speeches, but handing it out to friends and colleagues; and most impressively, delivered a 20-minute speech in Mandarin at elite Tsinghua University over the weekend. Zuckerberg hasn’t spelled out his reasons, but they’re pretty easy to deduce. China, home to the world’s largest number of Internet users, has blocked out Facebook since 2009. If Zuckerberg is going to succeed in his mission to “connect the world,” he needs to find a way back in.

Actually, that might be the easy part. If Zuckerberg is willing to play by the Chinese regime’s rules, adhering to strict censorship guidelines among other things, doors will eventually open. The tougher question is whether Chinese Internet users are interested in what Zuckerberg and Facebook have to sell. At the moment, there’s little reason to believe they are.