Facebook registered and said it was approved for a subsidiary in Hangzhou, China, last Wednesday, which could award the social media site temporary official status in the country after a decade of being blocked.
However, on Tuesday the corporate registration was taken down from the Chinese government website and references to the subsidiary seemed to be censored on social media sites in China, according to the New York Times.
Facebook and its associated apps Instagram and WhatsApp are all blocked in China, as are most Western social media platforms and all Google services. Facebook had said it would use its new Chinese subsidiary to coordinate with Chinese developers in a market that is closely censored.
“We are interested in setting up an innovation hub in Zhejiang to support Chinese developers, innovators and start-ups,” Facebook spokeswoman Debbie Frost said. “We have done this in several parts of the world — France, Brazil, India, Korea — and our efforts would be focused on training and workshops that help these developers and entrepreneurs to innovate and grow.”
Last week Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Recode that the social media company was “a long time away from doing anything” with China.
“We need to figure out a solution that is in line with our principles and what we want to do, and in line with the laws there, or else it’s not going to happen,” Zuckerberg said. “Right now, there isn’t an intersection.”
The Times notes that the Chinese Communist Party views social networks that it does not control as potentially destabilizing.
