Does China want to buy Facebook?
China is looking to buy a major stake in Facebook, a piece big enough to matter, according to the Business Insider.
The publication quoted a Facebook stock sales insider as saying the country's sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corp, is sniffing around for chances to purchase a stake in the social networking site "big enough to matter." Separately, the publication says rumor has it that Citibank is trying to acquire a $1.2 billion piece of the pie for sovereign wealth funds in China and the Middle East.
All this, of course, amid the reality that Facebook remains a non-entity in China, blocked by the country's Internet censorship regime during riots in Xinjiang in 2009. Beijing has since eyed social networking suspiciously, also barring Twitter but using a lighter hand to control China's popular micro-blogging site Weibo. Rumors have swirled around China and Facebook for months, but nobody is yet talking.
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