The rare meeting, reported by China’s state news agency Xinhua, suggests warming relations between Facebook and the Chinese government, even as Beijing steps up censorship of and control over the Internet. But has he taken his passion a tiny bit too far?
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“It’s great to be back in Beijing!” wrote Zuckerberg on a Facebook post that’s earned about 285,000 reactions as of this writing.
The air pollution index in the hazardous zone was at 15 times the safe level specified by the World Health Organization.
“When the 24-hour concentration of particle pollution is above 250 micrograms per cubic meter, the EPA recommends staying indoors – in a room or building with filtered air – and avoiding all physical activity outdoors”, EPA press secretary Melissa Harrison told ABC News Friday. “How do you update your Facebook in China, Mark?” he asked on his Facebook page, sharing the post.
“That’s just what The Zuck-up did this morning”, it continued.
It seems that even getting some exercise swings the media spotlight your way if are Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
The Facebook tycoon has used flattery before in his attempts to get China’s leaders onto his side.
Social media giant Facebook is banned in China. A photo of a beaming Zuckerberg in his trademark dark grey shirt, running with five others under a greyish, smog-covered Beijing sky, was attached to the post.
Zuckerberg met Xi in Seattle this past September at a confab with US tech executives.
Would you jog in this?
The National Meteorological Centre reported that smog this week reached “dangerously high levels” in Beijing.
The company’s founder was in the capital ahead of an economic forum that gives some of the world’s top business and finance leaders the opportunity to hobnob with senior Chinese politicians.
“Kissing up?” commented Tom Wang, a Chinese environmentalist.
In the photo, he is running in a group with several other people, all of whom are not wearing face masks.
As part of Mark Zuckerberg’s “A Year of Running” project, in which the Facebook CEO has vowed to run a mile every day in the year 2016, he and his team posted a photo of his crew running through a smoggy Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
Journalist and runner Peng Yuanwen had another quip.
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Foreign reporters in China linked the jogging to the 1984 Tiananmen Square incident, where Beijing brutally cracked down on student protesters with bullets and tanks. Another user whose screen name means “Scarlet who owns a cat 007” ridiculed Zuckerberg, saying “You don’t want your lungs anymore?”
