For companies like Facebook and Google, trying to do business in China is a bit like trying to dig up gold from deep underneath the ground. There are a lot of barriers in the way, and you will no doubt be forced to change your strategy several times, but if and when you get it right, you will be rewarded.

Many people are well aware of the fact that China, despite embracing certain principles of the free market in recent years, is still a communist country that has an enormous amount of control over the everyday lives of its citizens. Just a few weeks ago, for instance, China’s president banned Winnie the Pooh from the Internet because of a series of memes that were being spread around comparing him to the lovable (but round) Disney character.

As you can probably imagine, companies like Facebook have to do a lot of work to modify their platform if they wish to reach China’s Internet audience of 700 million people.

Yet, by modifying your platform to conform to China’s excessive rules and regulations, you are essentially complying with the agenda of the communist party. No one can necessarily blame someone like Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, for looking for ways to do business in other countries. It’s just a shame that he appears to be giving up on American values and embracing censorship in the process. (RELATED: Amazon goes all-in for communist China censorship.)

Back in December of 2014, The New York Times reported that Lu Wei, China’s Internet czar, was very pleased to see a book titled Xi Jinping: The Governance of China sitting on Mark Zuckerberg’s desk during a tour of Facebook’s office. According to The Times, Zuckerberg said that he had been reading the book in order to better understand “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” In other words, it seems as though the Facebook chief executive was trying to learn how to remodel certain aspects of the social media giant in order to comply with China’s authoritarian regime.

Recently, Facebook approved the May debut of an app called Colorful Balloons in China, according to an anonymous source with inside knowledge of the company’s plans. Colorful Balloons is an app that is similar to the look and feel of Facebook’s Moments app, and was released by a separate local company that has yet to disclose its connection to the social network giant. Such a secretive and stealthy move is unprecedented in China, and paints a clear picture of just how difficult it is to do business in the country, while complying with all of the censorship laws, regulations and restrictions. (RELATED: Apple goes all-in for communist China censorship by banning apps that help users bypass state censorship.)

But, while modifying your platform in order to do business in other countries is somewhat understandable, what should never be tolerated is the act of practicing the same sort of Internet censorship seen in China here in the United States. Earlier this month, Mike Adams published a piece on Censorship.news about how Facebook blocked all Natural News article posts after Natural News linked to a White House petition citing immunization dangers.

“In the latest outrageous example of total censorship against the independent media, Facebook has blocked nearly 100 percent of the sharing of articles from Natural News,” the Health Ranger wrote. Adams went on to explain that it all started when Natural News linked to a petition calling for a moratorium on childhood immunizations for five years.

“Immediately after the story was posted on the Natural News Facebook account — which has over 2.2 million followers — Facebook manually deleted the post and banned nearly all sharing of ALL posts from Natural News,” Adams explained. He concluded, “That’s why it’s time to regulate Google, Facebook and Twitter as public utilities. Their abuse of power to silence dissenting views has become a danger to the liberty of all Americans.”

Sources include:

NYTimes.com

Censorship.news