Why Facebook's Zuckerberg is so eager to promote Xi Jinping's book

Even if the motive behind it was sincere, it is hard to deny that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's decision to conduct a Beijing question-and-answer session almost entirely in Putonghua in October was great PR. His language skills may have been a little clumsy, but they showed humility and passion on the part of the young IT billionaire.

For some mainland internet users, it was a very promising sign. "I really hope this can help resolve the problem of the internet being blocked," one Sina Weibo user wrote after seeing the footage.

However, it looks as if some of that good PR may have been undone on Monday, when a photograph of Zuckerberg appeared on a state-run mainland news site. It showed mainland internet tsar Lu Wei visiting Facebook's Silicon Valley offices. On Zuckerberg's table, the accompanying article notes, was a book by President Xi Jinping called The Governance of China.

"I've also bought copies of this book for my colleagues," Zuckerberg was quoted as saying by a mainland news website. "I want them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics."

The sight of Xi's book on an IT tycoon's table has been taken as hypocritical and absurd by many observers - the government Xi leads has one of the most restrictive internet policies in the world and Facebook itself is banned on the mainland. Zuckerberg's promoting of the book struck many as kowtowing.

"Zuckerberg is an internet genius, the founder of the Facebook empire," Hu Jia, a prominent Chinese dissident, told the Telegraph. "Yet his understanding of Chinese politics is like that of a three-year-old, not a 30-year-old." On Weibo, many users also criticised Zuckerberg.