Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks on China cast shadow over Meta’s VR quest

As Meta sets its sight on introducing its virtual reality headsets to the Chinese market, Mark Zuckerberg’s contentious remarks about Beijing in the past may pose a major obstacle to his China dream.

According to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, Meta is preparing to re-enter China by selling the Oculus Quest VR headset in China. If Tesla can sell cars and Apple can sell phones in China, why isn’t Meta present there? Zuckerberg asked in a recent internal meeting.

But some observers are quick to point out that Zuckerberg has a history of criticizing the Chinese government, a stance that will likely be amplified in the current climate of heightened tensions between the U.S. and China.

Caught in U.S.-China tensions
In a speech delivered in 2019, Zuckerberg criticized TikTok for its censorship practice.

While our services, like WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in the U.S.

Not content with criticizing Facebook alone, Zuckerberg went on to level criticisms of China.

It’s one of the reasons we don’t operate Facebook, Instagram or our other services in China. I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world and I thought we might help create a more open society. I worked hard to make this happen. But we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they never let us in. And now we have more freedom to speak out and stand up for the values we believe in and fight for free expression around the world. TechCrunch