Facebook founder eyes China, faces threats in Pakistan
Facebook has over 500 million users worldwide but has been restricted in China since July 2009 after the deadly ethnic unrest in the restive Xinjiang region.
In a long question and answer session with an audience at Stanford University, Mark Zuckerberg explained how Facebook is only “not winning or going to win” in four countries: China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
“We kind of carved off China and said “Okay this one is extremely complex and has its own dynamics,” he told the audience at the Y Combinator start up school on Saturday.
“In China I think the values are so different from what we have in the US so, before we do anything there, I'm personally spending a lot of time studying it and figuring out what I think the right thing to do is.
“It's kind of a personal challenge this year, I'm taking an hour a day and I'm learning Chinese. I'm trying to understand the language, the culture, the mind set -- it's just such an important part of the world.
“How can you connect the whole world if you leave out a billion-six people?” China is the most populous nation on the planet, with an official tally of 1.3 billion -- 420 million are active online.