Facebook quietly launched a photo-sharing app called Colourful Balloons in China, where it has been blocked since 2009, through a local company not affiliated with the social media giant, The New York Times (NYT) reported.

“We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country in different ways,” Facebook said in a statement.

This is evidenced by the fact its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg (pictured), met with Chinese politicans, and often had videos of him speaking Mandarin and a picture he posted while jogging past Tiananmen Square shared on social media.

However the statement added: “Our focus right now is on helping Chinese businesses and developers expand to new markets outside China by using our ad platform.”

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The app is very similar to Facebook’s Moments app, the NYT report said, which organises photos and videos on a user’s device by time, location and the people in them.

Colourful Balloons helps users create photo albums which they can share with their contacts. However, the new app enables sharing via WeChat, China’s largest social network, rather than Facebook, and also makes use of QR codes.

China counts 700 million internet users who spend $750 billion online, meaning tech giants including Google and Facebook feel they are missing out on a huge market. Twitter and Snapchat are banned too.

Facebook’s core app was blocked in China in 2009, followed by Instagram in 2014, and most recently a partial block of WhatsApp in July after a censorship crackdown by the government.

In November 2016 it was reported Facebook quietly created a censorship tool which blocks posts from appearing in the news feed of users located in specific countries in order to make inroads into China.

Challenges of launching an app in China include dealing with the Cyberspace Administration of China which wants all app stores to be registered and said it will not licence augmented reality games until it assesses potential security risks.

The NYT report said news Facebook used a company called Youge Internet Technology to stealthily launch an app in China could cause friction between the country and the tech giant, and may be a point of discussion at the Chinese Communist Party’s autumn meeting.