Why are Google and Facebook banned in China?

Why are Google and Facebook banned in China?

Google and Facebook are ultra-successful giants in their respective fields. Facebook has over 2.3 billion monthly active users and Google has around 2 billion.


The search engine helps millions of people connect with businesses and interact with them. Facebook helps people around the world connect by letting them make profiles, post pictures, and videos, create fan pages for movies and games, chat with friends, etc.


In short, both are useful and easy to use, so why are they banned in China? Short answer: Censorship but as mentioned before Google is used by almost 2 billion people in the world. You can find almost anything just by “Googling” it. This is great because it makes services and products more convenient by making them available to you with a few clicks.

However, there’s virtually nothing stopping the search engine from logging data. To make search results accurate and targeted, Google collects data from users. China, on the other hand, does not want Google or anyone else to snoop on its citizen but China itself.


See: List of Eight Popular websites That are Banned in China


Furthermore, due to strict censorship laws, the Chinese government seeks to hide certain information. For example, if you search for sensitive information like Tiananmen Square the search engine will show you an error page. This is a result of the Great Firewall which is China’s internet censorship system.


Accessing Google will redirect you to the company’s servers in Hong Kong. Therefore, if you want to use the regular version instead of the Chinese one you might ask yourself google facebook banned china