Facebook has indicated that it plans to speed up its move into China dramatically, inviting English-speaking users of the site to help translate the site into Chinese.

Analysts said, however, that the networking site faces enormous challenges gaining a foothold in the lucrative Asian market - in the form of local competitors, a stricter regulatory framework and cultural differences which suggest the Chinese may be less willing to embrace the site.

Over the weekend, users of Facebook based in China received a message inviting them to assist with the process of translating the tens of thousands of lines of texts that appear on the site's many pages.

The technique, known as 'crowd-sourcing', is similar to that used by Facebook to create the Spanish version of its site, which went live last month, and relied on the translation skills of armies of regular users who turned to finding local expressions for Facebook's many idioms, such as 'poke' ('dar un toque').

Facebook, which has 39 million users worldwide according to Nielsen Online, declined to comment.

Observers of China's internet culture said that translation would be the least of Facebook's worries, however, and that the real challenge would come in taking the fight to the already well-established local competitors, including Tencent, the Shenzhen-based company which has already turned its hugely popular instant messaging service into a social platform with features similar to Facebook.

"I don't think they'll fare well - there's not a single foreign internet company that has managed to dominate its sector," said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of danwei.org, an English-language site that tracks the Chinese media industry. Mr Golkorn cited the example of Google, which still trails Baidu.com, the dominant Chinese search engine, despite launching its Chinese language site in 2006, and Yahoo! China, which is not as popular as local portals such as Sina.com and 163.net.

"It's also a cultural thing," Mr Goldkorn said. "Facebook is based on people using their real names and being honest, whereas the Chinese like the ability to be anonymous. E-mail addresses will rarely include a person's name, and on bulletin boards a lot of the posts are anonymous, so I'm not sure the Facebook model will work."

He added that Western companies tended to play "a cleaner game" in China - especially because they had foreign offices to report back to, whereas Chinese companies could be more ruthless in their negotiations with the Government, and react faster and more effectively to regulation.

Kaiser Kuo, group director of digital strategy for Ogilvy China, said that employing the help of locals to translate the site was "an obvious first step" for Facebook, but that the site would face intense competition from local sites, in particular Tencent, which runs the popular instant messaging service QQ.

According to CCID Consulting, a Beijing-based research firm, QQ is used by an estimated 42 million Chinese.

Facebook will also come up against xianonei.com and zhanzuo.com, formerly sites that catered only to university students, like Facebook, but which have recently opened their doors to the general public.

Statistics about internet use in China are difficult to come by because of restrictions on what research companies are able to monitor, but the internet is now used by an estimated 210 million people, of which 60 million use instant messaging, according to CCID Consulting.

Instant messaging is the single most popular communication tool in China, with QQ the dominant service followed by Microsoft's MSN, which is used by about 12 million people.

Rebecca Jennings, an analyst at Forrester, said that regulation would also significantly affect the uptake of Facebook among Chinese users. "I'd imagine there'll be tight control over political issues discussed on the site," she said, adding that the Chinese Government's tough stance on dissent may dissuade users from services like photo-sharing, which have become a trademark of English-language networking sites.

There are precedents, however. MySpace, the social networking site owned by News Corporation, parent company of Times Online, has partnered with a Chinese firm to introduce a more 'local' version of its site. After initially struggling to gain a foothold in China, eBay, the internet auction site, has also improved its reach in China by re-engineering its site to appeal to local sensibilities.

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