Pingtan Times, the flagship newspaper of the Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone, Fujian province, reached a milestone on Tuesday as the number of its followers on Weibo, the largest Twitter-like Internet service in China, hit 15,000.

The newspaper has attracted more than 16,000 followers on the Tencent microblog as of Tuesday, making it one of the most popular Pingtan brands on the cyber platform.

Since the launch of Pingtan Times' Weibo account, its messages have been published more than 5,477 times and have received 1,026 comments. It has also received more than 1,000 private messages from its readers. It has been playing an active role on Weibo, pushing interesting and time-efficient news, interacting with its followers and circulating stories that touch people's hearts.

On top of its daily routines, the newspaper's Weibo account always comes up with coverage of hot news, especially news in Pingtan. On Dec 16, 2011, it published the first-hand Development Plan of the Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone, which received a strong response from readers and saw its followers go up by 5,000 on that day alone.

On May 18, 2012, it did a Weibo live report on an international kitesurfing event held in Pingtan, which became popular among fans. Recently it called on its followers to vote Pingtan as one of the 10 most beautiful islands in Fujian.

Handy service and philanthropy are two other major focuses of the newspaper's Weibo account. It reports on road conditions and weather conditions during festivals and disasters like typhoon strikes. It also actively seeks help for people who suffer severe diseases and have economic difficulties.

Edited by Chen Zhilin and Michael Thai