China’s regulator said Google and Facebook would have to accept the country’s censorship and tough online laws if they want access to its huge online population, Reuters reported.

Qi Xiaoxia, director general of the Bureau of International Cooperation at the Cyberspace Administration of China, told a conference in Geneva many people ask: “Why Google, why Facebook are not yet working and operating in China?”

“If they want to come back, we welcome [them],” Qi told the Internet Governance Forum at the UN’s European headquarters: “The condition is that they have to abide by Chinese law and regulations. That is the bottom line,” Reuters reported.

The director general went on to say: “We are of the idea that cyberspace is not a space that is ungoverned. We need to administer, or supervise, or manage, the internet according to law.”

Google pulled out of China in 2010 due to censorship concerns and Facebook was blocked in the country in 2009. Facebook’s Instagram app also is prohibited, as is Twitter and many major western news outlets.

China’s government stepped up its campaign of censorship ahead of the Communist Party congress in mid-October. In September it restricted access to WhatsApp’s full suite of services in the country and in November Microsoft’s internet calling and messaging app Skype was removed from Apple’s App Store and Android app stores in the country.

In July Apple was forced to remove VPN applications from the App Store in China following new regulations to crack down on services which bypass the country’s massive firewall to access overseas sites.