Zoom blocks, then reinstates, Tiananmen activists’ accounts

PALO ALTO, U.S. — California-based videoconferencing company Zoom Video Communications temporarily blocked the account of a human rights group that used the platform to stage a vigil for the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on Chinese pro-democracy protesters.

The commemorative event took place May 31 with about 250 participants, many of them in China. Activists and scholars gave lectures, and more than 4,000 people listened in. The account of Humanitarian China, also based in California, was blocked for days in early June.

“It seems possible ZOOM acted on pressure from the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] to shut down our account,” the group said. The account has since been restored.

Zhou Fengsuo, one of Humanitarian China’s founders, took part in the Tiananmen protests as a student. He said in a written response to Nikkei on Thursday that he could not log in to Zoom for a few days starting Sunday, a week after the meeting. The operating company was asked about the suspension but did not respond on the matter. Zhou said Humanitarian China’s Zoom account was suspended for the “first time” but is available again now.

A Zoom spokesperson told Nikkei that “like any global company, Zoom must comply with laws in the countries where we operate.” The spokesperson acknowledged that several conferences with participants from China and overseas were affected and said that “it is not in Zoom’s power to change the laws of governments opposed to free speech.”

“We regret that a few recent meetings with participants both inside and outside of China were negatively impacted and important conversations were disrupted,” the spokesperson said.

In a blog post Thursday, Zoom said that it was notified by the Chinese government about four large, public June 4 commemoration meetings on Zoom that were being publicized on social media, and that Beijing demanded that the company terminate the meetings and the host accounts.

“Our response should not have impacted users outside of mainland China,” Zoom said, acknowledging the “two mistakes” of suspending or terminating host accounts in Hong Kong and the U.S., and shutting down the meetings instead of blocking participants by country.

Zoom announced that going forward it “will not allow requests from the Chinese government to impact anyone outside of mainland China.”

The company also said it is developing technology over the next several days that will enable it to remove or block participants based on geography. This will let Zoom comply with requests from local authorities without shutting down entire conversations, it explained.

Many American information technology companies do not make their services available in China or provide separate versions when they do. Zoom reported revenue of $328.16 million for the first quarter ended April 30, with the Asia-Pacific region accounting for less than 10%.

Zoom has research and development centers in China but plans to set up more in such places such as the U.S. city of Pittsburgh, possibly leading to an eventual separation of the services between the two countries.

The company, founded in 2011 by China-born engineer Eric Yuan, has come under American and Chinese scrutiny in recent months.

Its service was temporarily blocked in China around last fall as the trade war raged. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Zoom a “Chinese entity” this year after the company admitted “mistakenly” routing call data through China for even non-China users. The company said it then that it would “prevent these kinds of problems in the future.”

Zoom is a Nasdaq-listed American company. Yuan has blogged that he became a U.S. citizen in July 2007 and has “lived happily in America since 1997.”