VC7

Question: List the Pros, Cons, and unknown if facebook were to seek a way for the Chinese government to allow its expansion into China. What are the risks if the firm remain out of the country ? What do you think the firm should do?

In China, the Chinese communist party controls the media by blocking website content, monitoring the internet access, and censoring both the publishing and viewing of online material. Facebook is a platform known for public sharing and communicating. These two things do not go together.

Facebook has a whole country of potential new users that cannot be reached due to the Chinese government wanting to regulate all of the information going into China. If facebook was allowed in China I believe users from other countries would want to use that site to communicate with people in China and vice versa. Facebook investors rely on the growth of the company and existing facebook users want freedom of expression.

One of the pros of facebook being allowed by the government in china would be the increase in revenue and access to a larger market. One of the cons would be that facebook and the Chinese government would run into a lot of interferences due to China's laws and policies of communication and the internet and facebook being a social medias used for sharing and freedom of expression. An unknown would be if the Chinese population would even want to join facebook. Could facebook even be sustained in China? 

An option for facebook would be to seek for information to better understand the impact of how going into China will have on their user's freedom.Assessing options using "How does it make me feel" test. Do the Chinese population even want to be a user of facebook? We know that facebook used to sell users personal information.

Overall, I believe facebook should not expand to China. They will run into a lot of problems with the Chinese government and it is best that they just focus on improving the site for their existing users.