Hi everyone, thanks for coming here. I'm excited to be in Beijing. I love this city. My Chinese is a bad, but I'd like to try to use Chinese today. Maybe I need to practice. Mark, we are all grateful you're willing to speak Chinese.
Why did you want to study Chinese? Very interesting. I have three reasons: The second - The first is my wife is Chinese. Her dad speaks Chinese, and her grandmother only speaks Chinese.
So, I want to speak with them. One day Priscilla and I decided to get married. So I told her grandmother using Chinese and she was extremely surprised. Host: Priscilla is your wife. The second was I feel studying - I wanted to study Chinese culture. China is a great country.
I feel studying the language helps me learn about the culture. So I studied the language. The third - um - Mandarin Chinese is hard, very hard. I only speak English, but I like challenges. Now then tonight lets give him a challenge. I'll use Chinese. How many time have you come to China? 4 times - 4 times. I've been to Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Tianjin.
Tianjin! In Beijing I wanted to take the fast train. I also wanted to see Huo Yuanjia [a Chinese martial artist]. I like this movie [about] Huo Yuanjia I want to see his... Mark is a big fan of Huo Yuanjia. So he want to go to Tianjin to see his origins.
What is your favorite city? There all the different. My favorite city is maybe Beijing. It's the most Chinese. It has a lot of history. On this visit to China what is you plan? Um, sorry. On this visit to China what is your plan? This week I've attended the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management Advisory Board.
I came to the board meeting. I feel Tsinghua's students are great. Facebook has 140 Tsinghua alumni. You are one. Host: Yes, I am. Every year in China we recruit the best engineers. Last month we recruited 20 Chinese students. Yes, last month we recruited 20 students. Tomorrow they will begin working at Facebook. Can you tell us why you want to be on the Advisory Board of the School? First I want to thank Tian Yuan Jia [A guy in the first row I guess].
I'm very honored to be on the Advisory Board. I - I'm very concerned about education. In the United States I've done a lot things to support education. I hope ... Being on the Advisory Board is a good opportunity for me to learn about and support education in China. That's great! Mark supports education in China. This month you've gone to a number of countries, what is the purpose of your trip? I've gone to India, Indonesia, Korea, and Japan.
We want to help more people use the Internet. Today, most of the earth - 65% or almost 5 billion people don't have the Internet. Some people, about 15%, don't have the Internet. Some people, about 30%, don't have devices to use the internet.
But most of these people who don't have the Internet, don't have it because they don't know why they would want to use the Internet. If you ask me - sorry - If I ask you If you don't have a computer, cellphone, or the Internet and I ask you "Do you want to use the Internet?" You might ask me why do I want to use the Internet" So there are a lot of problems.
But we need to want - sorry - we need to connect the world. The Internet creates job opportunities and economic development. Very important. So connecting the world is very important to Mark. You want to connect the whole world - when did you start wanting to connect the whole world? In 2004, when I created the first version of Facebook it was because I wanted to connect all Harvard students.
I always thought there should be a product to connect the entire world, but I felt other companies did this. I remember when I was a college student every night I would eat pizza and talk about the future with friends.
One day, after I created the first version I told my friends I'm happy we helped connect students, but one day a product will connect the world. But we're only students. I felt other companies would do this. I felt Google, Microsoft, or other companies they have more than 10000 engineers and more than 100 million users. We're only students. But we always believed media is very important. Other companies don't believe that.
We always believed that. So we established it [Facebook]. Now we have billion users. So in the past 10 years Marks has established a very successful company. There are a lot of students here, they also want to create companies. What suggestions do you have for them? Suggestions for creating companies? I feel the best companies aren't created because the founder wanted to create a company, but because the founder wanted to change the world. If you decide you want to create a company you may start to develop your first idea. And you may recruit many workers. But you may have a lot of ideas. You don't know which idea is best.
If your first idea is bad your company is bad. But if you decide to change the world then you try to develop many more ideas. If any of your ideas are really good then you create a company. That's a great suggestion. Have a great idea then create a company. During the process of creating Facebook, what was the secret of your success? I feel the biggest thing is you can't give up.
Developing a company is hard. Most things will not go smoothly. You have to make hard decisions. You need get rid of some employees. (Host: Didn't you say tomorrow you're getting rid of me?) No, no. So if you don't believe in your mission then quitting is easy.
Most innovators quit, but the best innovators don't quit. So believe in your mission and not giving up are very important. It can be said you are the most successful innovator, what opinion do you have on Chinese innovation? Chinese innovation. I feel China has many of the innovative companies in the world. Last night, I had dinner with Xiaomi's Lei Jun. Is that right? Xiaomi is a very innovative company.
They developed many different products very fast. They're cheap. [Products are inexpensive] I feel they, Xiaomi, will grow very fast. Weixin is big. Most Chinese people use Weixin or QQ. Caobao is also very innovative. Caobao creates job opportunities. I feel China has many of the most innovative companies in the world. So Mark has a good feeling towards our Chinese innovation.
Speaking of China, I will ask Mark a few hard questions. I hope tomorrow I won't get fired. What plans do you have for Facebook in China? A hard question. We're already in China. We help Chinese companies add international customers. They use Facebook's advertisements to find more customers.
For example, Lenovo uses Facebook advertisements to sell new cell phones in Indonesia. I forgot. So in China I've seen economic development. We admire it. It's amazing. So we want to help other places in the world to connect to China.
For example, big cities, national parks. Hangzhou and Qingdao also have a great webpage on Facebook. These cities we have taken steps to develop a webpage to share Chinese culture. Great answer, and with such a hard question Mark only said one English sentence. Please give him a round of applause. Now lets relax a little bit after the hard questions and ask Mark a few personal questions. We hope he will share some personal details.
Now we ask you some personal details. Is that ok? Ok. The first question what is your favorite color? Blue. I can't say red or green because Facebook is blue. Now what Chinese food do you like? In Beijing I've been eating alley snacks [street food]. Host: Street food. But I also like Peiking duck. So Mark you like street food and Peiking duck. Outside of work what do you like to do? Outside of work... There is no outside of work. On Sunday, Priscilla and I like to cook.
You also have a pet. We have a dog. His name is Beast. He is a sheepdog. We love him a lot. Have you created a webpage for Beast? I developed Beast's page. Beast has 2 million fans. Next question, between you and Priscilla who's Chinese is better? She's Chinese. Using Mandarin I can speak more vocabulary, but she also speaks Cantonese. Her hearing is better than my hearing. My hearing skills are lacking. One day, I asked her why do my hearing skills lack.
She told me you don't listen in English either. Thank you Mark for that. We still have a little time, so we can have a couple of students ask questions. Student: Should I use English or Chinese? Chinese? Umm - maybe English. [I didn't understand her question and my Taiwanese wife thought is was very formal, but she'll repeat it in English, so hold on.] How did you start Facebook? And umm... You asked me why I started? The second question, I ... I was very fortunate. I never decided to leave. Harvard students can decide to stop taking classes.
I created the first version of Facebook. In the second year I developed Facebook and I took classes. But I'm fortunate because I could just stop taking classes. I am still a Harvard student. Sometimes Harvard leadership will ask me or tell me to come back. But now it's impossible for me to go back.
Your first question - the biggest challenge. The biggest challenge was going public in 2012. A public company. In 2012, our growth was slow. Our income growth was slow. Everyone was upset. But we took Facebook and made it public and now we have more than 1 billions users of Facebook on mobile phones.
This year Facebook is 10 years old. Host: 10 years [4 and 10 sound similar in Chinese when you're not careful about pronunciation so that's why Mark is a bit confused.] I ask what should we try to develop in the next 10 years. I've decided we should try to develop three things. The first we want to connect the entire world.
So we need to help everyone use the Internet. The second ... We want to develop artificial intelligence. I don't know how to say it Chinese. I feel after 10 years computers will be better than people at seeing, hearing, language and other things. So we will develop this. The third after everyone is using mobile phones, I believe the next breakthrough is Virtual Reality. I also don't know how to say it Chinese. Oculus is the first product. But we hope there will be many products..
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