China’s Top Twitters

For Chinese netizens hungry for information that won’t make it into tightly-controlled traditional media outlets, Twitter is one of the best resources going – along with an assortment of blogs and the forum 1984 BBS. In July 2009, after riots in Xinjiang, the micro-blogging service was blocked. Now, it can only be accessed via proxy server inside China.

The Chinese Twitter community is relatively small. Renown artist and activist Ai Wei Wei only has 44,621 followers – where American celebrity Twitters will attract millions. However,the community’s influence extends well beyond its size: Stories will crop up on Twitter and filter down to Chinese blogs within the firewall. This phenomenon hasn’t gone unnoticed by authorities – several Tweeters on this list have undergone police questioning related to their Twitter activity.

From the political to the pornographic – here are the people making the biggest waves in China Tweetsville.

CHINA’S TOP TWEETERS

@aiww

Followers: 44,621

i Wei Wei designed the Beijing National Stadium (the Bird’s Nest) for the 2008 Winter Olympics. He is perhaps China’s most influential artist, blogger and social activist. In the past two years, he has been involved in investigating the student deaths during the Sichuan earthquake.

In 2009 he was beaten by police in Sichuan to prevent him testifying for Tan Zuoren, another activist who was sentenced to five years in prison. Ai Wei Wei tweeted a photo of himself hospitalized.

Ai Wei Wei enlisted the help of his Twitter followers for a memorial to earthquake victims – he asked people to record themselves saying the name of of one of the victims. When someone sent him a recording, he took the name off the list. In the end, he put together a three-and-a-half hour recording of 3,412 volunteers saying the names of every student who died.

@isaac

Followers: 15,718

saac Mao is a venture capitalist and blogger – one of China’s first. He co-founded CNBlog.org. He transferred his personal blog to an overseas server after it was blocked in China for a post he wrote on the technical aspects of the Chinese censorship system.

@xiaomi2020

Followers: 6,326

iao Mi is a Shanghai-based freelancer who created Yizhe, a blog run by volunteers who translate Chinese and world news analysis. She came on the scene when Google decided to shut down its mainland China site. Xiao Mi used Twitter to real-time translate American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech on internet freedom. The people who follow Yizhe and Xiao Mi’s Twitter account will re-post the articles to Chinese blogs and forums – sometimes they get re-posted thousands of times. Many of these re-posts are deleted right away, but most of the articles she writes can be found somewhere within the Great Fire Wall.

@SecretaryZhang

Followers: 14,481

ecretary Zhang created 1984 BBS, a Chinese forum that’s another one of the top resources for unencumbered information. The members-only website was founded in 2008 and named after George Orwell’s dystopian novel. In June, Zhang was contacted by authorities. After he refused to start self-censoring, 1984 BBS was inundated with denial-of-service attacks.

 @jiehanzheng

Followers: 3,338

ie Han Zheng is a well-off high schooler in Beijing. He rose to internet fame during the 80th anniversary of the CPC when he posted about Beijing students forced to train for the celebration during their summer holidays. He gave a class presentation on censorship, and the PowerPoint was widely spread throughout the Chinese blogosphere.

@lianyue

Followers:53,214

ianyue is a writer best known for his column “I love to ask Lianyue” (我爱问连岳) in the Shanghai newspaper 上海壹周. He gives out western-minded answers to reader-submitted questions on family, relationships, life and work. He is highly active on Twitter and in the blogosphere.

@hecaitou

Followers: 34,364

ecaitou is a popular blogger and tweeter who writes on a range of subjects – from current events to cooking. His blog was blocked on Christmas Eve, 2009. Quickly, he blogged saying he wouldn’t try to make it un-blocked. He encouraged his audience to jump the GFW and keep following him. The entry received more than 500 comments, the most he’d ever had for one post.

 @aoi_sola

Followers: 104,186

oi Sola is a Japanese porn star, but her Twitter is important because it inspired many Chinese netizens to jump the firewall and sign on: On April 11 a Chinese tweeter tweeted, ““Sola is on Twitter and already has 2000 followers, she is hoping for the number to reach 10,000. I think it will be quite easy.” This got re-tweeted thousands of times, and it only took several hours for her to surpass her goal. The next day, she had more than 30,000, mainly Chinese, followers. Sola tweeted her thanks to her Chinese fans. Word spread to Chinese sites like Sina, and soon the public time-line was full of messages like “Hello Sola, I climbed the wall and came here to follow you…”

 @rtmeme

Followers: 39,133

his is a re-tweet robot that analyzes the public time-line and re-tweets popular and interesting tweets. It’s a useful tool for finding out what’s the latest in the Chinese Twitterverse.

 @fannylawrenC

Followers: 4,481

n American-born-Chinese mother of three living in the U.S. who got on Twitter for her marketing job. Soon, she opened another account and began updating in Chinese. She often blogs and tweets in Chinese about the cultural differences between the U.S. and China, especially those related to education.

 @jason5ng32

Followers: 19,051

ason Ng is the creator of Kenengba.com, a popular tech blog that evolved into covering politically sensitive issues. It is regarded by many as the most outspoken blog in the Chinese blogosphere. It was blocked in March of this year. Ng announced he would not self-censor in order to be unblocked. In June he was called in by police. He later posted about their confusion in dealing with him: When he told them he didn’t use Internet Explorer, they asked how he could get online. Then they asked if he owned Twitter, Ng wrote.

@digitalboy

Followers: 6,530

avid Zhang fathered the brand GeekCook and sells t-shirts through Taobao. He was one of the first Chinese netizens to being using social networking as a marketing tool. In March 2009 he released a shirt with a design memorializing Tiananmen. He was called in by police immediately after. He used his cellphone to tweet during the ordeal, and it wound up being a great marketing device for his shirts. After the incident, Zhang quit selling his political t-shirts through his store. But they are still available underground.

@fzhenghu

Followers: 23,876

henghu Feng is an economist, scholar and open supporter of democracy, who spent three years in prison on a charge of illegal business activity. In 2009, he was refused re-entry into China eight times. He is most famous for spending 92 days in the airport in Tokyo while he was refused entry into Shanghai. With the help of friends, he opened a Twitter account during this time. His Tweets made big waves online, and the publicity helped his case for return to China: He successfully came back to Shanghai in February of this year. It was widely published on Twitter that after he returned, he was hit by a car near his home under suspicious circumstances.