On October 22, Mark Zuckerberg posted a 30-minute video of his discussion with students and faculty of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management in Beijing. The video has reverberated around the halls of the Internet because Zuckerberg did the whole thing in Chinese.
Within a day, China observers around the world began giving their view of the talk. One reaction unfortunately set the tone, though. Foreign Policy's Asia Editor Isaac Stone Fish ("a Mandarin speaker" is at the top of his bio) berated Zuckerberg for his poor Mandarin presentation, publishing a post titled: “Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin Like A Seven-Year-Old.”
What followed in the subsequent week was an exchange between that FP editor and myself--the platform provided by James Fallows at The Atlantic--over the correctness of his views. My original response to the FP editor is copied below the break. The editor’s response to me is here. Finally, here is a third post on others’ views toward our conversation.
