The Chinese Twitter users fear that their privacy can be jeopardized after the appointment of the executive
Last week, U.S. popular social networking site, Twitter announced the appointment of Kathy Chen as a managing director for its Chinese operations. This move has triggered an air of fear among the Chinese users who are skeptical that the executive’s past experiences and strong background of working with country’s military and state security devices may put the current consumers’ privacy in jeopardy.
Even though Twitter is blocked in China however it has been massively used by the Chinese living abroad. The app is a widely used platform by the Chinese consumers to express their thoughts freely in their native language. Even though China has also developed the alternative of Twitter, dubbed as “Weibo” however the government has strict surveillance over the content shared on the site by the users and regulates and controls what is being said on the site and by whom.
He Qinglian, a renowned Chinese political activist, living overseas, has urged the U.S. Congress to organize a hearing over Chen’s appointment. She elaborated her viewpoint saying that Twitter has a colossal amount of data and considering that in the past, U.S. tech firms did kneel down to China and that the executive has strong military background then “it’s only reasonable for the Chinese users of Twitter to be worried about the future.”
Chen was first appointed as a technical engineer in 1987 for a military research institute. She has graduated from North Jiaotong University, in the same year, with a degree in computer science, according to Chinese media reports. Later she went on to work for 123COM, DEC, Compaq and finally lead Jinchen –the anti-virus software company whose local partner was indirectly owned by the Ministry of Public Security.
A U.S. based political nonconformist, Wen Yunchao, highlighted on his Twitter account that, in addition to above mentioned jobs, the newly elected personnel has also served around seven years for the People’s Liberation Army therefore “it’s only reasonable to question the direction of the company by its personnel decisions.”
The U.S. popular micro blogging site has responded via an email statement stating that back in 1980s it was quite common for the Chinese government to appoint graduates for the jobs. The company added that Chen’s graduation degree accentuate her chances of working as a junior engineer in People’s Liberation Army.
Twitter further elaborated that in 1990s when Chinese economy opened up with reform, then Chen preferred to continue with her technology career and in 1994 switched to private sector. It added that Kathy’s responsibility in Jinchen was to be the representative of the shareholders of U.S. tech firm, Computer Associates. Twitter clarified that she has “never worked for the Ministry of Public Security.”
Before joining Twitter’s team, Kathy Chen had been an executive with Microsoft Asia-Pacific Research and Development Group. She has expressed her excitement of working for the social networking site but she has not given public statement on the concerns of the Twitter’s Chinese consumers.
At the market which closed on Friday, Twitter stock stood at a price of $17.58. The 52 week range of the stock is $14 to $53.
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