Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi began directly communicating with Chinese people on Monday after opening an account on Weibo, the Twitter-like social media platform in China. The move came just about 10 days before his scheduled visit to China.
"Hello China! Looking forward to interacting with Chinese friends through Weibo," Modi said in his first post. He followed it up with another post greeting people on the occasion of Budh Purnima.
The new account started attracting new followers rapidly and built up a following of over 26,442 by late evening. This is very significant because there was no advance publicity about Modi's arrival on Weibo.
Observers said Modi's following might cross 200,000 by the time he begins the tour at the expected date of May 14. This is entirely feasible because millions of Chinese are on Weibo at any given time, and they are given to retweeting posts all the time.
This will give Modi a strong platform to convey his ideas about India-China friendship particularly among the Chinese youth. Modi's second post contained a strong message of peace.
"I wish everyone happiness on Buddha's birthday. Today we remember Buddha ideals and commands. He preached the ideas of harmony and brotherhood and had a vision of a peaceful world. Buddism is a unifying force across Asian countries. It can be one form of strong cohesion as the world enters the Asian era".
Buddism has seen a strong revival in China in recent years. Modi's message is expected to be widely circulated and commented upon in the coming days. Several foreign leaders, including British prime minister David Cameron, have their own Weibo accounts. But this is the first time an Indian leader has arrived on the Chinese social media scene.
In a statement, the Indian Embassy said that, "This Indian Prime Minister is an avid and active user of social media for several years now".
"From sharing updates on working of the government, policy deliberations, his own thoughts, greetings and replies to well-wishers, the Indian PM's social media outreach has been lauded all over the world," it said. Modi is also using info-graphics and videos to share the various efforts of the Indian government in the past one year, it said.
