An interesting piece of news I originally picked up on Facebook (where else?) reported that Mark Zuckerberg recently did a Q&A session in full in Mandarin.
BBC picked up on the story too (link here) and dug a little deeper to see what people thought about it.
Now I'm not a native speaker of Mandarin or even one who can converse very well so I will not make any judgements on his grammar, tone, etc. In fact, I admire him for: 1) being confident enough to speak 100% in a foreign language, 2) actually learning quite a complex language, 3) making an effort to reach out to China.
As many people probably know, Facebook is not even available for use in China. And yet Mr. Zuckerberg was there engaging with Chinese students and raising his and his company's profile in the process. Pretty savvy.
So when will China finally open up and allow Facebook in? In time most likely, especially if Mr. Zuckerberg continues to win over the public and China continues to open itself up to the world.