Mark Zuckerberg's sharp criticism of China is reportedly not going down too well with Facebook's base of Chinese employees

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently been sharply critical of China's internet censorship, a change of direction from a few years ago when Facebook was trying desperately to crack the Chinese market.
The suicide of a Chinese employee at Facebook's San Francisco headquarters has reportedly exacerbated tensions between employees and management.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's fresh attacks on China is stoking tensions with Facebook's Chinese employees, according to a new report from The Information .

The Information doesn't go into detail, but writes that Zuckerberg's increasingly aggressive stance on Beijing's free speech policies isn't going down well with Facebook's base of Chinese employees, many of whom actually hail from mainland China.

During a speech at Georgetown University last month, for example, Zuckerberg went on the attack criticising Chinese state censorship and TikTok , a social media platform and growing rival to Facebook which is operated by Chinese tech giant ByteDance.

Zuckerberg's increased anti-China rhetoric has been viewed by some as an attempt to please US lawmakers and to fend off regulation. It also risks creating an internal divide.

Chinese employees have also taken note of criticism made by execs associated with Facebook, The Information reported.

Facebook board member Peter Thiel launched a tirade against Google in July for being "infiltrated" by Chinese operatives, and called the company "treasonous." He did not offer any evidence to back up his claims.

peter thiel Alex Wong/Getty Images

The tension has been exacerbated by the death by suicide of a Chinese employee at Facebook's San Francisco headquarters in September. A Chinese Facebook engineer was fired in October after reportedly being asked to stop talking about his colleague's suicide, and his admonishment of the company went viral on Chinese social media.

Zuckerberg's anti-China rhetoric is a recent phenomenon, and previously the company has tried to move into China.

Facebook is one of the many American tech companies which is not allowed to operate in the country, being placed behind the so-called "Great Firewall." As recently as 2016 Facebook was pursuing a potential acquisition of Shanghai-based lip-syncing app Musical.ly as a way to break into the Chinese market. The deal never came good however, and Musical.ly was bought by ByteDance in 2017 and merged into what is now TikTok.

You can read the Informations full report here.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact this reporter via email at ihamilton@businessinsider.com or iahamilton@protonmail.com . You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop .

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Mark Zuckerberg's sharp criticism of China is reportedly not going down too well with Facebook's base of Chinese employees

You can read the Informations full report here.

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