(The above funny picture shows a Chinese idiom which has similar pronunciation of ‘Facebook’ and it means ‘must die’, Facebook has to be “dead” (in China) lol)
In July 2009, an online group named “Global protests. Support Uygurs to seek independence.” called for large scale of protests at China’s embassies among the world. A few days later, Facebook was not to be accessible from most parts of China. Facebook is the latest social network website being banned in the recent years. Perhaps the above incident was just the fuse of the “FaceBlocked”.Some political scientists believe that the Chinese government was always nervous about Facebook because in the recent year, facebook was always used as a forum for protestors to organize different kinds of activities against different parties, especially the government. Therefore, the Chinese officers claimed that Facebook was banned because of censorship reason.
Many evidences show that Facebook is still attempting to enter the China market. The recent visit of Facebook’s owner Mark Zuckerberg to several top Chinese IT firms, like Sina, Biadu, etc, in 2010 is one of the examples. However, it seems that it is still not easy for facebook to re-enter China’s market.
Since the stability of the regime is one of the most important philosophies of the current Chinese government, therefore, it would not allow any activities or actions which will affect the stability of the current regime. In the recent year, the online social network always being used by the protests to comment on different political issues or even organize protests. The China regards these kind of actions are affecting the stability of the current regime. According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook can serve as an agent of change in China, like it has been in Egypt or Tunisia. The existence of Facebook can give the freedom of speech to the Chinese people which they cannot get until now. Allowing the accessibility of Facebook without blocking any functions of it does not match the political system of Chinese government. Therefore, it is believed that ‘Faceblocked’ will not be released in medium term.
Some researchers said even Facebook is allowed to re-enter the Chinese market, it is still not an easy task for it to survive. The main reason is there are already some dominated online social network exited in China, like Renren which already got about 160 million users. Statistics also shows that Reren is still the first choice of online social network. Moreover, Reren is gaining population in recent years, that means the bigger Reren growths, the harder it is for facebook to survive in China.
Some people suggest that Facebook can only when it is a Chinese version. That means it ‘facebook.cn’ instead of ‘facebook.com’. That means it is an online social network which under the China’s censorship control which seems to be separated from Facebook.com. However, if I am a living in China, it seems that there is no big reason for me to use Facebook.cn instead of Reren? According to an article called “How can Facebook enter China?”, it mentions that Since the Chinese government require the Chinese companies to filter those critics about “the Communist Party, the country leaders, the current policies and any other "Sensitive" contents with just some phone calls or secret notes”. It gives an example, “In case that Facebook did enter China, it is likely to hire some teams to handle "sensitive" posts and comments, just as what Sina, Sohu, Tencent and all the other Chinese networking companies are doing”. Therefore, for me, it is meaningless because I still cannot have the freedom of speech in such an online social network.
All in all, it is still uncertain when the "faceblocked" will be released, but probably not in short-term.
Many evidences show that Facebook is still attempting to enter the China market. The recent visit of Facebook’s owner Mark Zuckerberg to several top Chinese IT firms, like Sina, Biadu, etc, in 2010 is one of the examples. However, it seems that it is still not easy for facebook to re-enter China’s market.
Since the stability of the regime is one of the most important philosophies of the current Chinese government, therefore, it would not allow any activities or actions which will affect the stability of the current regime. In the recent year, the online social network always being used by the protests to comment on different political issues or even organize protests. The China regards these kind of actions are affecting the stability of the current regime. According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook can serve as an agent of change in China, like it has been in Egypt or Tunisia. The existence of Facebook can give the freedom of speech to the Chinese people which they cannot get until now. Allowing the accessibility of Facebook without blocking any functions of it does not match the political system of Chinese government. Therefore, it is believed that ‘Faceblocked’ will not be released in medium term.
Some researchers said even Facebook is allowed to re-enter the Chinese market, it is still not an easy task for it to survive. The main reason is there are already some dominated online social network exited in China, like Renren which already got about 160 million users. Statistics also shows that Reren is still the first choice of online social network. Moreover, Reren is gaining population in recent years, that means the bigger Reren growths, the harder it is for facebook to survive in China.
Some people suggest that Facebook can only when it is a Chinese version. That means it ‘facebook.cn’ instead of ‘facebook.com’. That means it is an online social network which under the China’s censorship control which seems to be separated from Facebook.com. However, if I am a living in China, it seems that there is no big reason for me to use Facebook.cn instead of Reren? According to an article called “How can Facebook enter China?”, it mentions that Since the Chinese government require the Chinese companies to filter those critics about “the Communist Party, the country leaders, the current policies and any other "Sensitive" contents with just some phone calls or secret notes”. It gives an example, “In case that Facebook did enter China, it is likely to hire some teams to handle "sensitive" posts and comments, just as what Sina, Sohu, Tencent and all the other Chinese networking companies are doing”. Therefore, for me, it is meaningless because I still cannot have the freedom of speech in such an online social network.
All in all, it is still uncertain when the "faceblocked" will be released, but probably not in short-term.
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