Facebook Inc’s apps and Web sites are still blocked in China, but that is not stopping the social media giant from trying to open a center in the country to support local start-ups.
Facebook set up a Chinese subsidiary, Facebook Technology (Hangzhou) Ltd, earlier this month, according to a filing with the Chinese National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System. The subsidiary, which was approved on Wednesday last week, has registered capital of US$30 million, the filing showed.
Asked for comment, a Facebook spokesman said the company is looking into setting up an “innovation hub” in Zhejiang Province.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Reuters earlier reported the existence of the filing.
“We have done this in several parts of the world — France, Brazil, India, [South] Korea — and our efforts would be focused on training and workshops that help these developers and entrepreneurs to innovate and grow,” the spokesman said in a statement.
However, in a sign of the difficulties in operating in the country, the registration appeared to be removed from the Chinese government Web site later in the day.
Facebook has long been eager to get back into China, which blocked access to the platform in 2009. The market represents the largest population of potential users the company still cannot reach.
Local equivalents, such as Tencent Holdings Ltd’s (騰訊) WeChat (微信), dominate the nation’s Internet landscape, and in many ways the mobile app revolution has moved faster in China than elsewhere.
Facebook even went so far as to build a tool that could geographically censor information in the country, the New York Times reported in 2016, but right now all it can do is sell ads to Chinese businesses who want to advertise outside of the country.
The filing lists Damian Yeo, head of the company’s legal team in Asia Pacific, as the chairman of the new unit, while David Kling, Facebook’s deputy general counsel and corporate secretary, is a director.
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