A photograph of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg jogging through the smog in downtown Beijing has prompted a torrent of comments – not all of them flattering – on Chinese social media.
Zuckerberg, who is in the Chinese capital for an economic forum, posted the photo of himself and five others running through Tiananmen Square on Friday, with the gate to the Forbidden City imperial palace in the background.
None wore the air-filtering face masks that are ubiquitous in Beijing and other Chinese cities in the photo, posted to Zuckerberg’s Facebook page. At the time the picture was taken, Beijing’s air pollution index was well into the hazardous zone, at about 15 times of the level considered safe by the World Health Organisation. Experts urge people to avoid any outdoor activities when pollution is high.
Zuckerberg is a much loved personality in China where Facebook is banned along with other overseas social media platforms. Chinese residents wondered aloud whether Zuckerberg’s jog was a gesture aimed at pleasing the authorities who claim they are gradually winning the battle against air pollution.
The tech tycoon has become somewhat notorious for persistent, yet so far futile, efforts to woo leaders enforcing China’s strict online censorship. His efforts have included telling the country’s top internet official on a visit to Facebook’s California headquarters in 2014 that he was engrossed in the collected speeches of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
The same year he engaged his audience by speaking in halting Mandarin during a forum at the prestigious Tsinghua University, while avoiding mention of the government ban on Facebook.
“Kissing up?” commented Tom Wang, a Chinese environmentalist, who reposted Zuckerberg’s running photo and added a graphic of Beijing’s air quality readings from Friday morning.
Ginny Koh told the BBC: “For someone who keeps proclaiming his love and interest in China and wants to make it big, you sure don’t know anything about our country. For one, everyone in Beijing has to wear a mask. We don’t take air pollution lightly, like you do.”
Others noted that Zuckerberg’s run took him through the square where hundreds of thousands of Chinese students gathered in the spring of 1989 to demand democracy. The movement ended in the early hours of 4 June after troops and tanks crushed all resistance, killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters.