Mark Zuckerberg reportedly wants to follow in Elon Musk and Tim Cook’s footsteps, and sell products in China — but his past criticisms of China could haunt him

• Meta is in talks with Chinese tech company Tencent to bring its VR headsets to the country, WSJ reported. 
• But CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s past criticisms of China’s policies may pose a challenge to his plans.
• Zuckerberg has previously slammed China for restricting free speech and stealing intellectual property.

Mark Zuckerberg will likely not be getting a royal welcome in China — like the one Elon Musk got in May — anytime soon. 

Meta is reportedly in talks with Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings to bring its Quest virtual-reality headsets to the country, The Wall Street Journal first reported. The company has been trying to break into China since 2021, when Zuckerberg questioned why Apple and Tesla are allowed to sell their products in the country, but Meta is not, according to the Journal. 

But Zuckerberg’s efforts to win over Chinese government officials may be eclipsed by his past criticisms of China, posing a potential hurdle for his virtual reality plans. 

In 2019 at Georgetown University, a decade after China banned Facebook over accusations that the platform violated China’s censorship rules, Zuckerberg slammed China for limiting free speech with its strict media regulations, known by experts as The Great Firewall.

Zuckerberg specifically put China on blast for restricting its residents from posting political content related to pro-Hong Kong activism on TikTok, which he said could set a dangerous precedent for the internet at-large. 

“While our services like WhatsApp are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the China-based app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these same protests are censored, even here in the US,” Zuckerberg said the 2019 speech. “Is that the internet we want?”

In that same speech, Zuckerberg said he was worried that China’s values could spread to other parts of the world.  

“China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries,” Zuckerberg said . “A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese.”

A year later, Zuckerberg once again chided the Chinese government, this time over China’s history of stealing intellectual property. 

“I think it’s well-documented that the Chinese government steals technology from American companies,” Zuckerberg said during a 2020 congressional hearing.

Now Zuckerberg needs those same officials he has criticized, but Meta’s past efforts to win over Chinese authorities fell short, like in 2016, when he proposed a censorship tools to get back into the country.

“I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world,” he said during his 2019 speech. “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.”

If Zuckerberg gets his way this time and Quest headsets enter the Chinese market, it could be a boon for the company.

But only time will tell whether Zuckerberg’s plans to bring its virtual reality tech to the country will become an actual reality. 

Meta and Tencent didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment before publication.