Twitter’s Controversial China Head Leaves Company 9 Months After Joining

Kathy Chen, Twitter’s managing director for operations in China, has announced she is leaving the company only nine months after joining.

Chen was appointed to her position in April 2016, which had been controversial at the time.

She reportedly worked as an engineer for the People’s Liberation Army’s Second Artillery in the late 1980s and 90s, according to Tech Wire Asia, leading some to question her control on freedom of speech.

In a timely year-ender, she called her decision to depart from the company to pursue other opportunities.

Chen started her series of 12 tweets on Saturday afternoon:

“Hi everyone, I have some updates to share with you about Twitter’s Greater China business. As you know, our focus in Great China is to help Chinese businesses to reach a global audience on our live communications platform. Great China is one of our fastest growing revenue markets in Asia Pacific for Twitter today and we remain committed to this market.”

Chen wrote about the company’s growth before finally breaking the news:

“We have grown our Greater China advertiser base nearly 400% over the past 2 years and we thank all of them for their support.”

“Now that the Twitter APAC team is working directly with Chinese advertisers, this is the right time for me to leave the company. Working at Twitter has opened my mind, my passion is to connect people to the world through cross-cultural communications & businesses.”

Chen then shared where she’s headed, “I will take some time off to recharge, study about different cultures and then pursue more international business opportunities.”

Chen previously worked at Microsoft and Cisco Systems.

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