Ahead of his trip to Beijing later this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has joined Sina Weibo, China’s largest micro-blogging platform. Sina Weibo is one of the most popular sites in China, with 167 million active users as of November 2014. Modi joins a band of world leaders both past and present—former Israeli president Shimon Peres, British prime minister David Cameron, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd and Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro—who have joined Sina Weibo. In a tweet, Modi announced that he was joining Weibo saying, “ä½ å¥½ä¸å›½!期待通过微åšä¸Žä¸å›½æœ‹å‹ä»¬äº’动. (Hello China! Looking forward to interacting with Chinese friends through Weibo).” According to Weiboreach, a Chinese social media analytics site, US President Barack Obama was the most popular leader discussed on the platform in 2014, generating a “chatter volume” of 7,061,356, miles ahead of his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, who had a chatter volume of 1,416,974. Weibo was launched in 2009 by Sina Corporation. It means “microblog” in Chinese. Just like Twitter, it allows users to post comments, updates, pictures and videos. Its impact has been hailed by many Western analysts, who feel that the site has given many ordinary Chinese a platform to engage and interact with other users, often discussing issues and topics otherwise outlawed by China’s strict censorship.
