BEIJING: China may ban Facebook, but not its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. The young billionaire delighted an audience of students at a prestigious Beijing university this week with a 30-minute chat in his recently learned Mandarin Chinese.

He made no explicit mention of China’s ban on the social media giant, but an indirect reference to it drew laughter during the question-and-answer session at Tsinghua University. Zuckerberg, whose company has long sought to enter China, noted Facebook already helps some Chinese companies in foreign markets, citing computer maker Lenovo’s ads on Facebook in India.

“Speaking of China, I have a more difficult question for Mark, which I hope will not get me fired. What are Facebook’s plans in China?” asked the forum facilitator and Facebook employee Wei Xiaoliang, to the laughter and applause from the audience.

“We are already in China,” Zuckerberg said in Chinese, to more laughter. “We help Chinese companies gain customers abroad,” he said.

“We want to help the rest of the world connect to China.”

Zuckerberg may be hoping to lay the groundwork for an eventual entry into China, but he visited Beijing this week as a newly appointed member of the advisory board for Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management and met with the university’s president on Tuesday.

Both he and the university posted clips of his Wednesday session, which was open to questions from students for the last 8 minutes.

Facebook has been banned in China since 2009. Beijing promotes Internet use for business and education but bans material deemed subversive and blocks access to foreign news and social media websites that authorities believe could stoke social unrest.

Zuckerberg’s Chinese pronunciation was far from fluent. Some native speakers called it a “challenge” to understand. But he was able to maintain intelligible conversation for a half hour and the students responded with warm cheers for his effort and laughter at his humor.

Zuckerberg married Chinese-American Priscilla Chan in 2012, and set himself the goal of learning Mandarin in 2010.