Govt blogs have work to do

The rise of social media and Web 2.0 technologies has transformed ordinary people's lives and their interactions with governments. Micro blog, WeChat and other social media applications are being increasingly adopted and used by government organizations and officials in China to facilitate communication between the government and the public. According to a recent report by the Office of Public Sentiment Monitoring, People's Daily Online, the numbers of micro blog accounts opened by government agencies and officials have reached record highs.

By the end of last year, about 160,000 government accounts had been verified on the Tencent micro blog platform. The Sina Weibo platform has about 100,000 accounts. If we consider the accounts on other platforms, such as Netease and People's Daily Online, the number of government micro blogs will add up to 300,000 with an average annual growth rate of more than 100 percent in the past five years.

More than 3,000 government agencies have been using WeChat, a popular mobile instant messenger application developed by Tencent, to interact with netizens on public administration and public policy issues. And the fact that China has the largest number of government micro blog accounts in the world can help it educate and serve the world's largest group of people with Internet access.