Sina Weibo Lauches Propaganda Platform for Beijing, and Probably Other Cities Soon

Probably in connection with last month’s announcement of a government edition of Sina Weibo, Sina’s (NASDAQ:SINA) microblogging service is now featuring a propaganda orgy special platform for Beijing government departments in the trending topics on its site, visible for anyone with a Beijing account.

The platform, which appears to be exclusive to Beijing for the moment but which we expect will spread soon enough to Shanghai and other first-tier cities, is called the “Beijing Weibo Announcement Room” (rough translation) and collects the postings of Weibo accounts connected to many of the city’s government departments and other official organizations, from the police to the Tourism Development Committee. There are also several government spokesmen listed.

Users can check off the accounts they want to follow and then click once to follow them all at once, or just check the live stream of posts lower on the page, which is sortable into three categories: “Cultural Beijing”, “Technology and Science Beijing”, and “Green Beijing”.

It also features the music video for “Beijing Welcomes You,” which is embedded in the top right and plays automatically. This is an especially important feature, because most Beijingers have only heard this song several billion times by this point and it’s possible not everyone has memorized all the words (or the names of all the celebs in that video) yet.

So, yes, Beijing welcomes you to, uh, check out the official pronouncements of its government departments on Weibo! Because if there’s only thing the kids love more than microblogging these days, it’s reading about the newest regulatory initiatives from the Tourism Development Committee.

We’re guessing that this is, as previously mentioned, related to the official government edition of Weibo we wrote about last month, and we expect that our friends in Shanghai and other cities will get access to the same service soon enough.

Finally, since I had to hear the song again to write this report, I’m inflicting it on you all, too. Commence wholesome entertainment time!