Facebook plans to open Beijing office: report

Social networking site Facebook Inc plans to open an office in Beijing and has already rented space in a business district tower, Beijing Youth Daily reported Monday.

The US firm has rented space in Fortune Financial Center, located in Beijing's central business district, for three years, the newspaper said, citing a source from the property developer. The company's spokesman declined to comment on the issue, according to the report.

Facebook has not started decorating its office, and no company logo could be found inside Beijing's tallest office building, according to the report.

Facebook has been eyeing the Chinese market for a long time. It has so far registered more than 60 trademarks in China since 2007, according to information from the Trademark Office of the State Administration For Industry and Commerce.

The social networking site's service currently remains inaccessible in the Chinese mainland.

Facebook set up an office in Hong Kong in 2011, which focuses on selling advertisements.

It has also built up a business in the mainland via the Hong Kong office, and the company has several thousand app developers in the mainland, the company's Vice President Vaughan Smith said at the Global Mobile Internet Conference held in Beijing in May.

Its business performance in Asia has been growing rapidly in recent years. The company gained revenue of $354 million in the Asian market in the first quarter of this year, accounting for 14 percent of its total revenue, according to Bloomberg's Friday report.

When Facebook launched an IPO in May 2012, the prospectus showed its Asian revenue was just $118 million in the first quarter of that year, equivalent to 11 percent of its total revenue.