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Ed Zhang

It would be 'unthinkable' for the central government to close down all of the country's Twitter-like microblogs, or weibo, however troublesome they could be for the government, said a senior spokeswoman for the Beijing municipality.
'It would be an impossible task,' said Wang Hui  (pictured), general director of the capital city's information office. 'So many people are using weibo [the Chinese name for 140-character microblogs], and they all love using them.' 
This was because weibo is 'instant, convenient, and allows self-expression', she said. 
Wang insisted that she had never ordered messages posted by visitors to her microblog to be deleted for their political content, other than those with 'violent and sexual content'. Private microblog owners, however, complain that political censorship is rife in the Chinese microblog world. 
Rather than fight an impossible and unpopular battle, the government has decided to go with the tide. On November 17, the Beijing municipality became the first of the mainland's 31 governments at provincial, municipal or autonomous region level to launch an official microblog (city.weibo.com/g/beijingBeijing).
 The move allowed the city to explain its policies, report its work and provide services 'in the way the people like', Wang said. 
The Beijing municipal microblog carries releases from 21 local government agencies. 
'Eventually, we hope all municipal government departments will join our group,' she said. She and her staff were busy training spokesmen from all municipal offices in the use of microblogs. 
Beijing was followed by the Shanghai municipality 11 days later, which opened its own microblog channel (weibo.com/shanghai city?zw=news). 
Apart from the municipal 'group microblog', Wang said all of Beijing's 14 districts and two counties would have their own microblogs by the end of this month. Beijing, the nation's capital, does not belong to a province but is governed as a municipality under the direct administration of the national government, in a similar fashion to the Australian Capital Territory and the District of Columbia in the United States. Shanghai, Chongqing  and Beijing's neighbour Tianjin  are also separate municipalities.
Wang admitted that the Wenzhou  high-speed train disaster in late July hastened the Beijing municipal information office's plans to develop its microblog. 
That crash, which claimed 40 lives, was reported on the private microblog of a passenger four minutes after it happened - more than two hours ahead of the domestic media. 
Despite the willingness of many government offices to respond to the rapidly growing microblog population, none can be said to be duly prepared, noted Hou E, a researcher with Tsinghua University's social media project. Running a government microblog was far removed to running a regular office, Hou said. 'First you need to keep updating all the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,' he said. 'But, most important, you have to be responsive'. 
The key to success for any government microblog, Hou said, was to be open, communicative and always ready to allow for questions, criticism and opposition.




Beijing municipality embraces weibo fad