Twitter CEO Dick Costolo to make first China visit

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo will meet Shanghai government officials, academics and students in his first visit to China.

The meeting signals Twitter's interest in cracking the lucrative but thorny market with 600 million Internet users.

Twitter, which has been blocked by Chinese censors since 2009, said the trip was a personal tour for Mr Costolo, who is due to land at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport on Monday.

Mr Costolo is scheduled to spend three days in the business capital meeting Shanghai government officials - including representatives of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone, established in 2013 to test market liberalization measures, such as looser rules governing currency conversion and foreign direct investment.

But officials have denied media reports that Internet restrictions and censorship, including the blocking of Twitter, will be relaxed there.

While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a frequent visitor to China and has openly spoken of his desire to enter China to fulfill his vision of connecting the world, Twitter's senior management has played down the likelihood of seeking a license to do business there.

Trip may fuel speculation Twitter is looking to enter China

Mr Costolo's trip is likely to stoke speculation about the company's ambitions in the country.

Major Internet companies including Google Inc and Yahoo Inc have been hampered by Chinese government intervention.

Google pulled out of mainland China in 2010, unwilling to accept what it argued was heavy-handed censorship of the Internet.

Any attempt to enter China with Beijing's approval would be a delicate proposition for Twitter, which takes pride in its reputation for defending free speech and rebuffing government requests for private user data.

In a statement, Twitter declined to disclose what Mr Costolo intended to bring up with Chinese officials.

"Dick is visiting China because he wants to learn more about Chinese culture and the country's thriving technology sector," a Twitter spokesman said.

Mr Costolo is not expected to ask Chinese authorities to lift the Twitter ban.

Circumventing censorship

The visit comes at a time when the Chinese government, two years into President Xi Jinping's administration, persists in a campaign to clamp down on bloggers and dissident voices on social media platforms like Sina Corp's Weibo, which closely resembles Twitter.

In June, Mr Costolo told the American Society of News Editors convention that he would "love to be able to run Twitter as Twitter in China," but added that, "We are not going to sacrifice the principles of the platform and the way we think users should be able to communicate in order to do so."

Even if it does not establish an official presence in China, Twitter has avenues to make money from China.

Twitter's subsidiary MoPub, which serves up ads inside mobile apps, counts many small Chinese app developers among its customers, while Beijing-based PC-maker Lenovo Group Ltd is an advertiser on Twitter itself.

Despite the official ban, Twitter, which has 250 million monthly users around the world, has maintained an active, if relatively small user base inside China.

While some estimates have placed the number of Chinese users in the tens of millions, just 0.05 percent of all tweets in 2013 were written in Chinese, according to Colorado-based social data provider Gnip, which analyses Twitter output.

Many savvy Chinese netizens and even state-run media organizations regularly use virtual private networking (VPN) technology to circumvent censorship.

Dissident artist Ai Weiwei has tweeted more than 105,000 times and boasts more than 238,000 followers.

The state-run Xinhua news agency, official broadcaster China Central Television, and Hu Xijin, the influential editor of the pro-government Global Times newspaper, all maintain active Twitter accounts.