China’s state run news agency promotes itself on Twitter – despite ban
Xinhua, China’s state run news agency has ticked off local bloggers after utilising Twitter to promote its stories… even though the social networking site has been banned by the government in China.
The news agency began operating its English language account earlier this year, even though Twitter has been off limits to the Chinese since 2009.
Perhaps unsurprisingly then no-one in China noticed… until that is a story appeared in domestic media which raised eyebrows at the service.
Ostracised Chinese micro-bloggers have been angered that they have been blocked from the site whilst the government’s main news outlet has free reign to post as it wishes, laying itself open to double standards.
Xinhua currently operates accounts around the world although its English language output, @XHNews, is reportedly run from Beijing, making it technically illegal.