Recently, China has seen its fair share of visits from tech industry heavyweights.
PALO ALTO, CA - OCTOBER 06: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (C) greets Facebook employees before speaking at a news conference at Facebook headquarterson October 6, 2010 in Palo Alto, California. Zuckerberg announced the addition of a revamped personal groups feature and the ability to download everything you have posted to Facebook. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
Take Apple CEO Tim Cook for instance,who has been seen having business meetings in China, for what is rumored, may be a deal that could heighten the number of iPhone users in the country. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was also in China, for what is said to be a simple vacation; after all, Zuckerberg is dating Priscilla Chan—a Chinese-American.
It is highly doubtful though, that Zuckerberg's trip was solely for pleasure; especially given that the Facebook founder–who has expressed some interest in China–was also seen visiting a few internet companies: Sina, Alibaba, and Baidu.
Sure, internet billionaires have emerged from China. Yet it is still unproven, whether American internet moguls can actually find true success in China, with censorship that limits their businesses and their users. Online freedom? Ya don't say.
China bemoans the internet. The country is known for having a complex and multilayered censorship system, according to CNN's Rebecca MacKinnon. The Great Firewall of China is said to be the world's most sophisticated internet censorship program.
Yet Facebook's IPO paperwork filed suggests that the company may just try to enter the Chinese space: "…in the event that we are able to access the market in China in the future." Sure, we don't know yet whether the company will actually take the plunge into China, but we do know that Facebook is an ambitious company with an ambitious founder.
In this interview with Charlie Rose, the Facebook CEO says that his goal has always been to make the world an open place. He wants to avoid the slow-pace trap that hinders most technology companies. He wants to "move quicker."
And Facebook is quick. Some would say that if any company could do it, Facebook would be the one.
But at what expense?
The same thing was said of Google. If anyone could do it, Google could.
Google too, wanted to enter the Chinese internet space in order to make the world a more open place. In 2010, Google publicly stated,
We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results.
But after four years in China, and major debacles intended to deter the company, Google blogged that it was no longer willing to censor its results in China; advising its users to install anti-spyware programs on their computers.
Former Google executive Sheryl Sandberg, tells Charlie Rose that Facebook and Google are similar Silicon Valley established companies. So how Facebook would continue its goal of creating an open space for social networking within a country that frustrated even Google by censoring such a thing, will be something worth noting.
But for now, this is worth noting:
Internet businesses face a dilemma in China
Sure, every business has to be tweaked once it decides to go global. Yet tech entrepreneurs walk a fine line between a simple tweak to a business concept, and a major undermining of the solution their business tells its customers it offers: online freedom. In fact, we saw the backlash that Twitter received when it attempted to be truthful about how it would post its censored tweets.
And Chinese internet censorship is so complex that just recently, six people were detained in China, for what the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Public Security calls gossip. The State Internet Information Office, said that rumors are a "very bad influence on the public," and the detainees were supposedly "admonished" by the police, and let go after they showed "intention to repent."
Repent from? Spreading rumors. Rumors of a coup. Rumors of army trucks being seen entering the city. Roughly sixteen websites were shut down. Just like that.
Then, Chinese internet entrepreneurs were put on time-out. Sina Weibo, the popular Chinese social media site similar to micro-blogging site Twitter, was given a 3-day timeout, and comments on the site were censored (although this is nothing new to the site which experienced its share of censorship a few years back when it was shut down by the Chinese government, during the July 2009 Ürϋmqi riots).
The expense of being an internet entrepreneur in China? Your business could be shut down, your actions censored, and you as a founder (or your onsite manager) possibly detained and or "admonished."
When this happens, how do you help the people you started off helping in the first place: your users?
Your thoughts?
If you liked this post, you might also like:
Why Women Entrepreneurs Should Go Global In China
Cheryl is a writer, start-up junkie and global business fanatic; with a passion for women and children's issues. Find her on Twitter or via her blog:Making Business Personal
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