Facebook在華成立子公司,註冊信息卻被刪

SHANGHAI — After a decade of effort in which Facebook’s progress at courting China often seemed to stall, the social network finally gained an official status in the country — at least temporarily.

上海——在討好中國方面，Facebook歷經十年的努力，似乎進展不多，但如今，這家社交網絡平臺終於在中國獲得了一個正式身份——至少暫時如此。

Facebook has registered a subsidiary in the city of Hangzhou, according to a Chinese government filing, which said the company had gotten approval last Wednesday. The subsidiary was financed with an investment of $30 million, according to the records.

根據中國政府的報備文件，Facebook已經在杭州註冊了一家子公司，該文件稱該公司已於上週三獲得批准。根據記錄，該子公司獲得了3000萬美元（約合2億元人民幣）的投資。

Yet late Tuesday, in a sign of possible complications, the corporate registration was taken down from the Chinese government website, and some references to the new subsidiary appeared to be censored on social media in the country.

然而，週二晚出現的情況說明事情沒那麼簡單，該公司在中國政府網站上的註冊信息被刪除，一些提到這家新子公司的言論似乎在中國社交媒體上遭到了審查。

The moves indicated how complicated it remains for Facebook to navigate China, where it has been blocked for almost 10 years. If the subsidiary is allowed to proceed, it will be a toe in the water here for the Silicon Valley company. Facebook said it wanted to use the subsidiary to coordinate with Chinese developers in the closely censored market.

這些舉動表明了Facebook在中國尋找方向仍然有多複雜，它在這裏已經被屏蔽了近10年。如果子公司獲准繼續經營，這對於這家硅谷公司來說將是一次試水。Facebook表示，它希望利用該子公司，在這片受到嚴格審查的市場中協調與中國開發者的工作。

Even to release an app in China, Facebook is likely to need a separate license from regulators. To go further and introduce one of its larger products, like its social network or messaging service, would require further negotiations over issues like data storage and security. Facebook’s photo-sharing service, Instagram, and its messaging platform, WhatsApp, are also blocked in China.

即使是在中國發布應用程序，Facebook也可能需要獲得監管方的專項許可。要想更進一步，推出一款更大的產品，如社交網絡平臺或傳訊服務，就需要就數據存儲和安全等問題進行進一步談判。Facebook的照片共享服務Instagram及其消息平臺WhatsApp也在中國被屏蔽。

“We are interested in setting up an innovation hub in Zhejiang to support Chinese developers, innovators and start-ups,” said Debbie Frost, a Facebook spokeswoman, referring to the province in eastern China where Hangzhou is. “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.”

“我們有興趣在浙江建立一個創新中心，以支持中國的開發者、創新者和初創企業，”Facebook發言人黛比·弗羅斯特(Debbie Frost)提到杭州所在的中國東部省份時說。“我們在全球很多地方——法國、巴西、印度、韓國——都這樣做了，我們的努力將集中在培訓和研討會上，幫助這些開發者和創業者創新和成長。”

The ruling Chinese Communist Party deems all social networks that it does not ultimately control, like Facebook and Twitter, as potentially destabilizing. A series of sophisticated internet filters block residents from gaining access to such sites. Networks within China often self-censor, but are still held closely accountable by government regulators.

執政的中國共產黨認爲，所有不能由它完全控制的社交網絡，如Facebook和Twitter，都有造成不穩定的可能。一系列複雜的互聯網過濾器阻止中國居民訪問這些網站。中國境內的網絡經常自我審查，但仍然受到政府監管機構的嚴格問責。

To get around those fears, some American companies, like LinkedIn, have voluntarily censored their products.

爲了消除這些擔憂，一些美國公司，如領英(LinkedIn)，已經自願審查了它們的產品。

If Facebook started introducing services in China, it would probably face questions about whether to censor content or share data with Beijing. The latter could be a particularly tricky issue for the social network while it is under scrutiny by the United States government for its handling of user data.

如果Facebook開始在中國推出服務，它可能會面臨是否審查其內容或與北京分享數據的問題。對於這家正在接受美國政府對用戶數據審查的社交網絡來說，後者可能是一個特別棘手的問題。

Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said in an interview last week with Recode’s Kara Swisher that the company was “a long time away from doing anything” in China. He said Facebook was working on products for China “over the long term,” but added: “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. Right now, there isn’t an intersection.”

Facebook首席執行官馬克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)上週在接受Recode的卡拉·斯威瑟(Kara Swisher)採訪時表示，該公司在中國“已經有很長一段時間什麼都沒做”。他說Facebook正在“從長遠上”爲中國開發產品，但補充道：“我們需要找到一個符合我們的原則、我們想做的事情，同時又符合那裏的法律的解決方案，否則它就不會發生。目前，還沒有這樣的一個交集。”

Facebook’s fortunes in China follow some progress here for Google, which has also seen its products slowly squeezed out of the market. Over the past year, the search giant has set up an artificial-intelligence research lab in China and introduced several services, including an A.I.-powered sketching game.

Facebook在中國獲得好運之前，谷歌(Google)也取得了一些進展，後者的產品也曾慢慢被擠出這片市場。在過去的一年裏，這家搜索巨頭在中國建立了一個人工智能研究實驗室，並推出了幾項服務，包括一款由人工智能驅動的畫圖遊戲。

To court China, Mr. Zuckerberg previously pulled out all the stops, dining with China’s president, hosting a question-and-answer session in Mandarin at a Chinese university and even once jogging across a smog-choked Tiananmen Square. The company also quietly worked on a censorship tool and released a photo-sharing app in China, called Colorful Balloons, without putting its name to the service.

爲了向中國示好，扎克伯格此前曾竭盡全力，與中國國家主席共進晚餐，在一所中文大學主持了一次普通話問答會，甚至有一次還在霧霾瀰漫的天安門廣場慢跑。該公司還悄悄地開發了一個審查工具，並在中國發布了一個名爲彩色氣球的照片分享應用程序，但沒有給該服務冠上自己的名字。

Despite not having any product or office in China, Facebook still does booming business here. The company sells ads across the world to Chinese companies and the Chinese government. Facebook’s ads are so in demand that China has been the company’s largest source of ad revenue in Asia.

儘管沒有任何產品或辦公室，Facebook在中國仍有蓬勃發展的業務。該公司向中國公司和中國政府銷售世界各地的廣告位。Facebook的廣告如此受歡迎，以至於中國已經成爲該公司在亞洲最大的廣告收入來源。

The legal representative for Facebook’s new China subsidiary was the same employee who registered the company that launched Colorful Balloons: Ivy Zhang, Facebook’s chief representative and head of business development in China.

Facebook新中國分公司的法定代表人是註冊了推出彩色氣球的那家公司的同一名員工：Facebook首席代表兼中國業務發展主管張京梅(Ivy Zhang)。

Also on the board of the new subsidiary with Ms. Zhang is William Shuai, Facebook’s China government affairs representative and a former government relations executive at the Chinese search engine Baidu and LinkedIn. Before holding those positions, Mr. Shuai was briefly a low-level official in the Chinese government.

Facebook的中國政府事務代表、前中國搜索引擎百度和領英的政府關係主管率鵬(William Shuai)也與張京梅一起加入了新子公司的董事會。在擔任這些職務之前，率鵬一度是中國政府的一名低級別官員。