AFP reports that Beijing cadres are going to receive training in how to use microblogs, navigate BBS forums, and read blogs:
The city’s Communist Party school is offering the training to “bureau-level leading cadres” to help “leaders catch up with Internet currents”, the Legal Evening News said.
The training will “raise cadres’ understanding of information dissemination, and social and public sentiment in order to better respond to sudden crises,” it said.
Chinese blogs, chat rooms and other sites have become lively outlets for expression in a country where traditional media are tightly controlled and where activists say freedom of speech is curtailed.
In particular, Twitter-like micro-blogging sites have grown fast, with tens of millions of people believed to have opened accounts in the past year alone.
The training at the Beijing party school — which is separate from the Communist Party’s national-level school, also based in Beijing — will focus on micro-blogging, the news report said.
It will include “what is micro-blogging; how to browse blogs and micro-blogs; what is MSN all about; which BBS (bulletin board system) sites and posts are most popular; and which search engines to use to find hot topics in society”.
