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——在讨好中国方面,Facebook历经十年的努力,似乎进展不多,但如今,这家社交网络平台终于在中国获得了一个正式身份——至少暂时如此。
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.
根据中国政府的报备文件,Facebook已经在杭州注册了一家子公司,该文件称该公司已于上周三获得批准。根据记录,该子公司获得了3000万美元(约合2亿元人民币)的投资。
Yet late Tuesday, in a sign of possible complications, the corporate1 registration2 was taken down from the Chinese government website, and some references to the new subsidiary appeared to be censored4 on social media in the country.
然而,周二晚出现的情况说明事情没那么简单,该公司在中国政府网站上的注册信息被删除,一些提到这家新子公司的言论似乎在中国社交媒体上遭到了审查。
The moves indicated how complicated it remains5 for Facebook to navigate6 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 Silicon7 Valley company. Facebook said it wanted to use the subsidiary to coordinate8 with Chinese developers in the closely censored market.
这些举动表明了Facebook在中国寻找方向仍然有多复杂,它在这里已经被屏蔽了近10年。如果子公司获准继续经营,这对于这家硅谷公司来说将是一次试水。Facebook表示,它希望利用该子公司,在这片受到严格审查的市场中协调与中国开发者的工作。
Even to release an app in China, Facebook is likely to need a separate license9 from regulators. To go further and introduce one of its larger products, like its social network or messaging service, would require further negotiations10 over issues like data storage and security. Facebook’s photo-sharing service, Instagram, and its messaging platform, WhatsApp, are also blocked in China.
即使是在中国发布应用程序,Facebook也可能需要获得监管方的专项许可。要想更进一步,推出一款更大的产品,如社交网络平台或传讯服务,就需要就数据存储和安全等问题进行进一步谈判。Facebook的照片共享服务Instagram及其消息平台WhatsApp也在中国被屏蔽。
“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 innovate11 and grow.”
“我们有兴趣在浙江建立一个创新中心,以支持中国的开发者、创新者和初创企业,”Facebook发言人黛比·弗罗斯特(Debbie Frost)提到杭州所在的中国东部省份时说。“我们在全球很多地方——法国、巴西、印度、韩国——都这样做了,我们的努力将集中在培训和研讨会上,帮助这些开发者和创业者创新和成长。”
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-censor3, but are still held closely accountable by government regulators.
执政的中国共产党认为,所有不能由它完全控制的社交网络,如Facebook和Twitter,都有造成不稳定的可能。一系列复杂的互联网过滤器阻止中国居民访问这些网站。中国境内的网络经常自我审查,但仍然受到政府监管机构的严格问责。
To get around those fears, some American companies, like LinkedIn, have voluntarily censored their products.
为了消除这些担忧,一些美国公司,如领英(LinkedIn),已经自愿审查了它们的产品。
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 tricky12 issue for the social network while it is under scrutiny13 by the United States government for its handling of user data.
如果Facebook开始在中国推出服务,它可能会面临是否审查其内容或与北京分享数据的问题。对于这家正在接受美国政府对用户数据审查的社交网络来说,后者可能是一个特别棘手的问题。
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 intersection14.”
Facebook首席执行官马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)上周在接受Recode的卡拉·斯威瑟(Kara Swisher)采访时表示,该公司在中国“已经有很长一段时间什么都没做”。他说Facebook正在“从长远上”为中国开发产品,但补充道:“我们需要找到一个符合我们的原则、我们想做的事情,同时又符合那里的法律的解决方案,否则它就不会发生。目前,还没有这样的一个交集。”
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 sketching15 game.
Facebook在中国获得好运之前,谷歌(Google)也取得了一些进展,后者的产品也曾慢慢被挤出这片市场。在过去的一年里,这家搜索巨头在中国建立了一个人工智能研究实验室,并推出了几项服务,包括一款由人工智能驱动的画图游戏。
To court China, Mr. Zuckerberg previously16 pulled out all the stops, dining with China’s president, hosting a question-and-answer session in Mandarin17 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.
为了向中国示好,扎克伯格此前曾竭尽全力,与中国国家主席共进晚餐,在一所中文大学主持了一次普通话问答会,甚至有一次还在雾霾弥漫的天安门广场慢跑。该公司还悄悄地开发了一个审查工具,并在中国发布了一个名为彩色气球的照片分享应用程序,但没有给该服务冠上自己的名字。
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.
尽管没有任何产品或办公室,Facebook在中国仍有蓬勃发展的业务。该公司向中国公司和中国政府销售世界各地的广告位。Facebook的广告如此受欢迎,以至于中国已经成为该公司在亚洲最大的广告收入来源。
The legal representative for Facebook’s new China subsidiary was the same employee who registered the company that launched Colorful Balloons: Ivy18 Zhang, Facebook’s chief representative and head of business development in China.
Facebook新中国分公司的法定代表人是注册了推出彩色气球的那家公司的同一名员工:Facebook首席代表兼中国业务发展主管张京梅(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 briefly19 a low-level official in the Chinese government.
Facebook的中国政府事务代表、前中国搜索引擎百度和领英的政府关系主管率鹏(William Shuai)也与张京梅一起加入了新子公司的董事会。在担任这些职务之前,率鹏一度是中国政府的一名低级别官员。
1 corporate [ˈkɔ:pərət] 第7级 | |
adj.共同的,全体的;公司的,企业的 | |
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2 registration [ˌredʒɪˈstreɪʃn] 第8级 | |
n.登记,注册,挂号 | |
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3 censor [ˈsensə(r)] 第9级 | |
n./vt.审查,审查员;删改 | |
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4 censored [ˈsensəd] 第9级 | |
受审查的,被删剪的 | |
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5 remains [rɪˈmeɪnz] 第7级 | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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6 navigate [ˈnævɪgeɪt] 第9级 | |
vi.航行,飞行;导航,领航;vt.驾驶,操纵;使通过;航行于 | |
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7 silicon [ˈsɪlɪkən] 第7级 | |
n.硅(旧名矽) | |
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8 coordinate [kəʊ'ɔ:dɪneɪt] 第7级 | |
adj.同等的,协调的;n.同等者;vt.协作,协调 | |
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9 license [ˈlaɪsns] 第7级 | |
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10 negotiations [nɪɡəʊʃ'ɪeɪʃnz] 第7级 | |
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11 innovate [ˈɪnəveɪt] 第8级 | |
vi. 创新;改革;革新 vt. 改变;创立;创始;引人 | |
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12 tricky [ˈtrɪki] 第9级 | |
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13 scrutiny [ˈskru:təni] 第7级 | |
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14 intersection [ˌɪntəˈsekʃn] 第7级 | |
n.交集,十字路口,交叉点;[计算机] 交集 | |
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15 sketching ['sketʃɪŋ] 第7级 | |
n.草图 | |
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16 previously ['pri:vɪəslɪ] 第8级 | |
adv.以前,先前(地) | |
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17 Mandarin [ˈmændərɪn] 第10级 | |
n.中国官话,国语,满清官吏;adj.华丽辞藻的 | |
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