Twitter's head of China leaves after just 8 months

Twitter's head of greater China has left the company, just eight months after joining the social network.

Kathy Chen, who joined Twitter's Hong Kong office after two five year stints at Microsoft, announced her departure on New Year's Eve in a string of tweets.

She said she had successfully helped to grow Twitter's advertising business in China, so "it's time to pursue my next dream."

She noted that over the past two years, Twitter has seen four-fold growth in advertisers in the greater China region.

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It's worth pointing out that Twitter remains blocked in mainland China, as it has been since 2009, so the four-fold growth that Chen alluded to is likely to have been over a pretty small base of advertisers.

But despite the block, some 10 million in China apparently access Twitter, according to a TechCrunch report from last year, which cited an anonymous source within the company. Chinese users would have to go through a VPN to access the site.

It's unclear if Chen was part of the 350 jobs (or 9 percent of its workforce) that Twitter announced it would cut in Oct. 2016.

Her departure comes shortly after Twitter lost a number of senior executives in Asia.

In November, both Twitter's head for India and its managing director for India, Southeast Asia, Australia and MENA (Middle East and North Africa) announced they were leaving.

Chen bid the latter adieu as well on Twitter.

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When Chen was hired in April, Chinese Twitter users (many in the U.S.) expressed fears that her history working for the Chinese military was indicative of the company bowing to government pressure to censor content.

It's no secret that China's answer to Twitter, Sina Weibo, is screened, and deletes posts or blocks search terms depending on official instruction.