Chinese social media and search platforms employee loads of people to only censor information. If any of the Western companies tried to match the level of censorship required it would dramatically increase costs of operation. If Facebook or Google agreed to censor their content to the degree that Chinese companies do, I believe they could operate in China. Google and Facebook claim to be morally opposed to censoring information, but it&#x27;s unclear to me if this is really the case, or if spending the money required to self-censor is the impetus behind their &quot;moral actions.&quot; Obviously if China got rid of the censoring then the market would be much more attractive from a profit-based view.<p>At the same time, if Facebook entered China today I don&#x27;t know how many people would convert to using it like people from other countries do. WeChat is a really powerful player and a lot of recent Facebook Messenger features are basically pulled straight from WeChat.<p>Same with Youtube and Vimeo - Youku and PPTV are basically Youtube, Netflix, and HBO combined in one. Chinese users can watch Netflix and HBO shows for free via Youku and PPTV&#x27;s license deals with Western content producers. Plus Chinese users watch much less user-generated content online, unless it is live-streaming.