Xi Jinping used 'a human Chinese wall' of soldiers to block eye contact between him and Mark Zuckerberg, new book says

• Mark Zuckerberg wanted to talk to Xi Jinping at the 2016 APEC summit in Lima, Peru.
• He had a dressing room next to Xi and back-to-back speeches with the Chinese leader.
• But Xi swept past with enough people to create a "wall" between them — and the talk never happened.

Mark Zuckerberg was hoping he could meet China's leader, Xi Jinping, at the sidelines of the APEC summit held in Lima, Peru back in 2016.

But Xi didn't seem interested.

Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook executive, said she was with Zuckerberg when the botched attempt at a meeting took place. She detailed the incident in her memoir, "Careless People," which was published Tuesday.

In her book, Wynn-Williams wrote that she had tried to engineer a "spontaneous encounter" between Zuckerberg and Xi. She did this by securing a dressing room for Zuckerberg next to Xi's. Per her account, she also arranged for Zuckerberg's keynote speech at the summit to take place before Xi's.

However, the chance encounter Wynn-Williams and Zuckerberg were hoping for did not pan out.

Instead, Wynn-Williams said that Zuckerberg found himself being blocked from Xi's view by the Chinese leader's hefty security detail.

"It's a phalanx of men, in identical gray uniforms, marching in formation past us. Mark stares in disbelief, mouth open. They just keep coming, dozens and dozens of them," Wynn-Williams wrote.

"It's almost comical. Just when you think there could not be any more, more step in," she wrote.

The men ended up forming an "impenetrable dividing line" between Xi's and Zuckerberg's dressing rooms, Wynn-Williams wrote, calling them a "human Chinese wall."

"President Xi is so obscured that he doesn't even have to risk making eye contact with Mark," Wynn-Williams wrote, adding that Xi's men dispersed after he entered his dressing room.

"Uh, I guess that pull-aside isn't going to happen," Zuckerberg told his staff, per Wynn-Williams' account.

To be sure, Zuckerberg has managed to meet Xi on other occasions.

In September 2015, Zuckerberg got to speak to Xi when the Chinese leader visited Seattle for a two-day visit. They conversed briefly, and Zuckerberg later posted an image of himself with Xi on Facebook. Zuckerberg said he spoke to Xi entirely in Chinese, and called the moment a "meaningful personal milestone."

And in October 2017, Zuckerberg and Apple's CEO Tim Cook met Xi at Tsinghua University's business school in Beijing.

Wynn-Williams — an international lawyer and former New Zealand diplomat — joined Facebook in 2011 and became its director of global public policy.

In her book, Wynn-Williams gave her account of Facebook's efforts to enter the Chinese market. Facebook's leaders considered making major concessions, including letting Beijing control how and what content was displayed on the platform, she wrote.

When asked about the book, a spokesperson for Meta told Business Insider that the stories in it came from "an employee terminated eight years ago for poor performance."

"We do not operate our services in China today. It is no secret we were once interested in doing so as part of Facebook's effort to connect the world," the spokesperson said.

"This was widely reported beginning a decade ago. We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we'd explored, which Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019," the spokesperson added.

In a separate response to Wynn-Williams' book, Facebook also directed BI to Zuckerberg's comments on China in 2019.

During Zuckerberg's 2019 speech at Georgetown University — he objected to the censorship of protests on platforms like Facebook's competitor, TikTok.

Zuckerberg then called censorship "one of the reasons we don't operate Facebook, Instagram, or our other services in China."

"I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world, and I thought we might help create a more open society," Zuckerberg said. "I worked hard to make this happen. But we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they never let us in."

Facebook never made it across China's Great Firewall — and as of today, Meta's core products remain shut out of China's insular social media system.

The Chinese, meanwhile, operate an ecosystem of social media applications that function independently of their Western versions. Baidu, WeChat, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin — Chinese substitutes for Google, WhatsApp, X, Instagram, and TikTok — are what's used in the country instead.

Representatives for Meta and the Chinese foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment from BI.