Ministry of Tofu translates a Southern Weekend article about foreign embassies using Sina Weibo to connect with Chinese netizens:
“My colleagues in the Delegation of the European Union to China and I have become fans of China and the Chinese people, so I am happy to invite you to become our fans.” March 29, Markus Ederer, newly elected EU ambassador to China, post his first message, similar to tweet on Twitter, on EU’s official Chinese language microblog hosted by Sina.
Ederer looks to bring something new to the China-EU relations, “Presenting credentials, attending activities, making contact with officials, these are our routine work,” He said, “But I have always been thinking how to better communicate with people in China.”
He is not alone. The U.S. Embassy in China launched its microblog at the end of last may, and now has 68,277 fans. Within the past 10 months, they posted about 900 messages, which averages out to be three per day ….
Japanese embassy has a similar wish. Their first microblog post was published on Feburary 1. So far, they have published 111. “Microblog has significance as a platform of communication on the web. We hope that more Chinese friends can follow Japan on microblog and develop an interest into Japan,” said Shigeo Yamada, a minister at the Japanese embassy in China ….
Interestingly, some users think what’s good about the U.S. embassy’s microblog is it doesn’t delete comments or “blacken” people (microblog terminology, meaning blacklist users and block them), so it is “much better than the Japanese embassy’s microblog.”
