SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Twitter Inc
CEO Dick Costolo will meet Shanghai government officials, academics
and students in his first visit to China, signaling Twitter's
interest in cracking a lucrative but thorny market with 600 million
Internet users.
Twitter, which has been blocked by Chinese censors since 2009,
described the trip as a personal tour for Costolo, who is due to
land at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport on Monday and plans
to spend three days in the business capital. He is not scheduled to
visit Beijing.
Costolo is scheduled to meet Shanghai government officials —
including representatives of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone,
established in 2013 to test market liberalization measures, such as
looser rules governing currency conversion and foreign direct
investment. But officials have denied media reports that Internet
restrictions and censorship, including the blocking of Twitter, will
be loosened there.
Unlike at Facebook Inc, whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a frequent
visitor to China and has openly spoken of his desire to enter China
to fulfill his vision of connecting the world, Twitter's senior
management has played down the likelihood of seeking a license to do
business there.
But Costolo's trip is bound to stoke speculation about the company's
ambitions in the country. Major Internet companies including Google
Inc and Yahoo Inc have been hampered by Chinese government
intervention. Google pulled out of mainland China in 2010, unwilling
to accept what it argued was heavy-handed censorship of the
Internet.
Any attempt to enter China with Beijing's approval would be a
delicate proposition for Twitter, which takes pride in its
reputation for defending free speech and rebuffing government
requests for private user data.
In a statement to Reuters, Twitter declined to disclose what Costolo
intended to bring up with Chinese officials.
"Dick is visiting China because he wants to learn more about Chinese
culture and the country's thriving technology sector," a Twitter
spokesman said.
Costolo is not expected to ask Chinese authorities to lift the
Twitter ban. Twitter has flatly rejected the possibility of opening
an office anytime soon in China, which would subject the company to
Chinese law.
The CEO, who has never set foot in the country, will also meet
university administrators and participate in a round-table
discussion with students at Fudan University in Shanghai, the
official sponsor of his visa.
Costolo's visit comes at a time when the Chinese government, two
years into President Xi Jinping's administration, persists in a
campaign to clamp down on bloggers and dissident voices on social
media platforms like Sina Corp's Weibo, which closely resembles
Twitter.
In June, Costolo told the American Society of News Editors
convention that he would "love to be able to run Twitter as Twitter
in China," but added that "we are not going to sacrifice the
principles of the platform and the way we think users should be able
to communicate in order to do so."
Even if it does not establish an official presence in China, Twitter
has avenues to make money from China. For instance, Twitter's
subsidiary MoPub, which serves up ads inside mobile apps, counts
many small Chinese app developers among its customers, while
Beijing-based PC-maker Lenovo Group Ltd is an advertiser on Twitter
itself.
Despite the official ban, Twitter, which has 250 million monthly
users around the world, has maintained an active, if relatively
small user base inside China. While some estimates have placed the
number of Chinese users in the tens of millions, just 0.05 percent
of all tweets in 2013 were written in Chinese, according to
Colorado-based social data provider Gnip, which analyzes Twitter
output.
Many savvy Chinese netizens and even state-run media organizations
regularly use virtual private networking (VPN) technology to
circumvent censorship.
Dissident artist Ai Weiwei, to name one, has tweeted more than
105,000 times and boasts more than 238,000 followers. The state-run
Xinhua news agency, official broadcaster China Central Television,
and Hu Xijin, the influential editor of the pro-government Global
Times newspaper, all maintain active Twitter accounts.
Twitter, which has been blocked by Chinese censors since 2009,
described the trip as a personal tour for Costolo, who is due to
land at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport on Monday and plans
to spend three days in the business capital. He is not scheduled to
visit Beijing.
