A couple of days ago we told you about how some businesses outside of China are taking advantage of the Sina Weibo platform to reach Chinese consumers. And today there’s a report from Australia’s The Age explaining how both Victorian premier Ted Baillieu and opposition leader Daniel Andrews have taken to Weibo to reach Chinese speaking Victorians.
Having just opened the account on Monday, Baillieu himself has almost 25,000 followers so far, having posted only four updates, all in Chinese. His account sports a “V” for verified, and his advisor Gladys Liu has her email listed on his page for anyone who wants to correspond.
It’s pretty interesting that an overseas politician would take to Weibo to engage with Chinese people in his area. Perhaps we’ll see more of this in areas of the world which have high Chinese populations.
We’ve seen some creative use of social media in politics over the past few years, with Facebook playing a big role in last year’s general election in Singapore as just one example. Of course, the United States will see a presidential election this year as well. Might we see Barack Obama on Weibo reaching out to Chinese voters? Ok, perhaps not. But we can always hope.
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