Chinese Microblogs and Government Spin

The party secretary and top administrator in Chongqing, China’s largest municipality, has called for a campaign reflecting Mao Zedong’s revolutionary period that includes the use of an official “microblog.” This is part of an emerging trend in Chinese governance of using social networking to reach the masses. While appeasing the popular demand for access to new media, so the theory goes, the government can make it seem as if the people have the freedom to use it while tightly controlling the communications for Beijing’s purposes.