Book binds Zuckerberg to Xi Jinping

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appears so enamoured with Chinese President Xi Jinping's book, The Governance of China, that after reading it he ordered several copies for his staff.

This is not to say that purchasing a copy of The Governance of China is particularly difficult. Published in September, it has already been translated into nine languages.

The book, a collection of speeches by Xi, appears on Zuckerberg's desk in a photograph taken recently at Facebook's Menlo Park office in California. The international media and worldwide public reaction to the photograph has understandably been little short of a wild frenzy, with many vilifying Zuckerberg for supposedly "kowtowing to the Chinese" in an attempt to make economic gains by getting Facebook an entry into China's market.

But does Zuckerberg deserve such castigating comments? And should not Zuckerberg be commended for perhaps taking a genuine interest in contemporary China?

On an economic level, Zuckerberg and Facebook certainly do not deserve such criticism, for companies the world over, especially established Western brands, are known to have taken a similar approach to expand their markets without being criticized. What the critics have missed is the crux of the matter, that is, the wider issue of gaining in-depth knowledge of all aspects of contemporary China under the leadership of Xi.

Thanks to China's miraculous economic rise over the past more than 30 years, far too many ethnocentric eyes still eye the Chinese market to fill their coffers. But very few take time out to gain any meaningful understanding of the complexities and intricacies of the real China, the Chinese political system in particular. The United States government is a prime culprit when it comes to an extremely ethnocentric "examination" of the Chinese government, while remaining conspicuously silent over revelations of barbaric torturing methods used by the Central Intelligence Agency on terrorism suspects.