Facebook Registers Subsidiary in China, Website Still Banned

Facebook has registered a company in Hangzhou, China on July 18, as reported in a filing with China’s National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System.

The subsidiary in Hangzhou, home to the Alibaba Group, listed Facebook Hongkong Ltd. as the only shareholder and had a registered capital of $30 million. The chairman of the board is Damian Yeo, the Head of APAC Legal at Facebook.

According to Facebook spokeswoman Debbie Frost, the subsidiary is established as “an innovation hub” in the Zhejiang province where Hangzhou is the capital, “to support Chinese developers, innovators and start-ups.” Facebook has before set up similar hubs in France, Brazil, India and South Korea where they train and host workshops to help developers and companies to innovate and grow.

The Facebook website now is still blocked in China, almost a decade since the ban started in July 2009. Chinese web users cannot access search engines, news outlets, and social media sites such as Google, YouTube, and Twitter; instead they use Chinese equivalent sites such as Baidu, Youku and Weibo.

In attempts to better understand the country, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, has learned Mandarin and visited China many times. Last October Zuckerberg met Chinese President Xi Jingping at Tsinghua University business school where both Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook are on the advisory board.

Feature Image Source: VCG.