Beijing: Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, on Wednesday gave a dramatic display speaking in Chinese for about a half-hour at a forum at Tsinghua University in Beijing.Â
His Mandarin is far from perfect, but his first few words were received with cheers and applause by the assembled students and faculty members.Â
“Hello everyone. Thanks for coming,” he told the group. “I’m very glad to be in Beijing. I love this city. My Chinese is really a mess, but I study using Chinese every day.”Â
“Perhaps I need practice,” he added, to laughter from the group.Â
Zuckerberg joined the advisory council of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management this week.Â
Facebook has been blocked in China since 2009, but the company has long expressed a desire to enter the Chinese market.
Asked why he studied the language, Zuckerberg said his wife Priscilla Chan’s family members speak Chinese. Her grandmother was “very shocked,” he said, when he told her in Chinese that he and Chan planned to marry.Â
In China, Western Internet companies like Google and Twitter have also faced blockages, mainly because of concerns in Beijing that the free flow of information could lead to instability.Â
“We help Chinese companies increase foreign customers. They use Facebook ads to find more customers,” he explained, citing how Lenovo uses Facebook to advertise in Indonesia.Â
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