Chinese holiday island to unlock Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for foreign visitors
Authorities in Hainan also set to recruit 50,000 hospitality workers under three-year plan to boost tourism
Visitors to China’s tropical island of Hainan will have access to popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that are banned elsewhere in the country, as part of a new plan drawn up by the local authorities to boost tourism.
The provincial government said also that it expects to hire 50,000 English-speaking foreign workers – many from the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries – and buy 2,000 minutes of advertising time a year on international networks, including the BBC, CNN and CNBC, according to a lengthy three-year action plan published online and reported by state media.
The proposals come two months after Chinese President Xi Jinping announced his plans to transform the island province, known for its palm-fringed beaches and dubbed by some as China’s Hawaii, into a free-trade port by 2020.
Hainan’s three-year plan was released to the public on Thursday on the provincial government’s website, but had been taken down as of Friday afternoon. Its full text was still available via multiple mainland-based news outlets.
China uses a sophisticated censorship system known as the Great Firewall to block access to a long list of social media platforms and foreign news organisations, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.