Microblogging in China
Weibo (Chinese: 微博; pinyin: wēi bó) is a general term for microblogging, but normally understood as Chinese-based mini-blogging services, including social chat sites and platform sharing.
Weibo services use a format similar to the American-based Twitter-service, but are used almost exclusively by Chinese language speakers.
After the high-speed Wenzhou train collision in 2011 in which 40 people died, online posting played a key role in spreading the news quickly and discussing and evaluating government response.
The users included HP China, the Southern Weekly, artist Ai Weiwei, writer Lian Yue (连岳) and TV commentator Liang Wendao (梁文道).
[8] After the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, the CPC government shut down most of the domestic weibo services, including Fanfou and Jiwai.
Its executives invited and persuaded many Chinese celebrities to join the service, which led to strong growth in user numbers.
[9][10] Two other Chinese Internet portals, Sohu and NetEase, launched the beta versions of their weibo sites almost simultaneously, on January 20, 2010.
[17][Note 1] Quite a number of studies revealed that the active microblog users are government departments in China.
[19] In July 2009, Chinese microblogs were severely curtailed when most of the domestic weibo services such as Fanfou were shut down.
[14] Due to the Internet censorship in China, all of the China-based weibo services are now controlled by various self-censorship policies and methods.
Posts on topics which are sensitive and forbidden in China (e.g. Human Rights, Liu Xiaobo) are deleted, and the user's account may be blocked.
[23][24] From 29 July 2020, Cyberspace Administration will carry out a three-month special censorship action to We-Media in China.
One topic of the action is distributing We-Media accounts, which are on 13 major platforms including WeChat and Weibo, into different classes and categories.
The action aims to stop We-Media's spreading false information, incorrectly discussing the history of CPC and China, promoting wrong perspective of values, malicious marketing and extortion.
[8] After incidents such as the Wenzhou train collision and the 2010 Shanghai fire, criticism of the CPC government increased on weibo.
[citation needed] Recent studies have shown that official microblogging has become a sophisticated e-government effort for social management, especially for local governments and state units.
In doing so, government units are experimenting with ways of interaction and negotiation with the microblogging public and service providers in their attempt to improve social management and political legitimacy.
This negotiation process also exposes and/or creates inter-governmental tensions, since local governments in China consist of distinct units with their own particular preferences and operation procedures.
[28] The 2016 decision in the South China Sea arbitration resulted in a large-scale outpouring of criticism from Chinese internet users.
Early in February 2012, China's four key weibo companies – Sina, Sohu, NetEase and Tencent – announced that March 16, 2012, was the deadline for users to adopt their real name identity.
For standardizing the microblog service and its development and management, maintaining the order of online communication, ensuring information securities, protecting the legitimate interest of the Internet information services sites and the microblog users, satisfying the public's needs to Internet information, and promoting well-ordered development of the Internet, this regulation referred to the actual situation of the city and is enacted according to the "Telecommunications Regulations of the People's Republic of China", the "Measures for the Administration of Internet Information Services" and other laws, legislations, and regulations.
All microblog service sites within the city's administration area must rightfully ask for permission from the department that is in charge of Internet information content before applying for a telecommunications business license or performing non-operational Internet information services filing procedures.
[citation needed] Due to the strict Internet censorship policy on microblogging enacted by the CPC government, a number of Chinese microbloggers choose to make posts that contain "sensitive contents" on Twitter.
[35] Weibo's most significant competition is rival microblogging service, WeChat, as of 2014 the country's leading messaging application.
