The Chinese New Year message in Mandarin of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg got more than 4 million views, but little of them from his apparent intended audience --- netizens in China, where the social media site is still blocked.

The greeting in China's common tongue is largely seen as Zuckerberg's way of trying to overturn the Facebook ban which has been in place since 2009. Call it a friend request to all of China, tech observers say.

Like Us on Facebook

His New Year message was reposted only several times on China's Weibo, a Twitter-like micro-blogging service, indication that Zuckerberg's skills in Mandarin are not making an impression.

In October 2014, he did amaze university students in Beijing when he took part in a half an hour question-and-answer exchange on the future of world high technology in near fluent Mandarin.

Zuckerberg explained he began learning Chinese to speak better with the family of his wife, Priscilla Chan. He said he also wanted to understand Chinese culture better.

However, it remains to be seen if his Chinese language skills will help fix Facebook's problems in China, at a time when it is becoming more difficult for outside tech companies to do business there.

In the past few weeks, evidence shows that Chinese censors have worked overtime to patch holes in what is called the "Great Firewall of China," by plugging access to virtual private networks (VPNs), software that enables Chinese netizens to visit Web sites that would otherwise be inaccessible inside the country.

YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are permanently banned in China. This forced Chinese to turn to their homegrown equivalents, which are heavily monitored by censors.

Tech experts say the latest crackdown on VPNs is part of China's efforts to protect what it calls "cyber-sovereignty," where countries try to sift through all electronic information within their territory.

China has the most Internet users in the world, with roughly 650 million netizens --- large enough for the Middle Kingdom to exist in its own networking bubble.

Some tech analysts say that in the long run, cyber-sovereignty is not meant to keep tech titans such as Facebook out but it is a way to make sure that when they do operate in China, they will stick to Beijing's strict regulations and censorship. 

TagsMark Zuckerberg, Mandarin