Preparing to undertake his first visit to China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday sought to reach out to the country’s social media platform Weibo. He joined Weibo saying he looks forward to interacting with Chinese friends. Weibo is the most popular micro-blogging site in China, where Twitter is facing censorship.
“Hello China! looking forward to interacting with Chinese friends through Weibo,” he said in Chinese language. Weibo, considered the Chinese version of Twitter, is said to have over 140 million users. Modi is the third most followed personality in the world after the US President and the Pope. Modi will be in China from May 14 to 16. Earlier, as Gujarat Chief Minister, he had travelled to China a number of times. Apart from China, Twitter is facing censorship in North Korea and Iran. On some occasions, when people from China had logged in to Twitter through some other Internet traffic platforms, they faced the wrath of the State. China had jailed several people even for re-tweeting.