Modi joins Chinese social media site Weibo

Ahead of his visit to China later this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday tweeted that he has joined Chinese microblogging website Weibo.

Often called the Twitter of China, Sina Weibo is one of the most popular sites in China, in use by well over 30 percent of Internet users.

The prime minister uploaded an image of his comment on Weibo. "Hello China! Looking forward to interacting with Chinese friends through Weibo," he said in a message written in Mandarin and English.

A PMO release said: "The Prime Minister's Office also maintains a strong presence on social media. This is in sync with his vision of a digital India, where technology plays a pivotal role in governance and policy making."

Modi would be visiting China from May 14 to 16. Twitter is banned in China, and Facebook is highly restricted.

Modi has a prominent presence on social media, with 28,144,058 followers on Facebook, while the PMO India official page has 8,666,555 likes. On Twitter, Modi's own account has 12 million followers and the PMO India official page has 5.9 million followers.

By 3 p.m., Modi had around 20,500 followers, over 1,600 comments, and over 500 forwards on Weibo.

The PMO release said that Modi was "an avid and active user" of social media for several years and has used diverse social media platforms to reach out to people across India and the world.

It said that Modi's social media outreach has been lauded all over the world.