China's Weibo eyes global expansion, foreign-language products

Chinese social media giant Weibo is making a push into foreign markets and is considering launching new products in different languages, a senior executive told AFP, brushing off concerns over censorship and credibility.

The Twitter-style platform has long been prominent in China, known for its heavy censorship and Great Firewall, but it now wants to reach Chinese audiences overseas, Weibo Sports senior operations director Zhang Zhe said.

"We want everyone in the Chinese-speaking world to use Weibo," he said on the sidelines of this week's Sports Connects sport-business conference in Dongguan, southern China.

Zhang added that Weibo is also looking into hiving off new, more niche products in different languages including English, partly inspired by the success of China's TikTok overseas.

The short-form video-sharing app has proved wildly popular this year. Its Beijing-based creator, Bytedance, this week announced a global tie-up with basketball's NBA that will allow it to show highlights in several countries, including the US.

"Weibo is a very comprehensively developed product. We not only have videos, we also have images, graphics, articles, even live streams. So we've got everything," said Zhang, speaking through a translator.

"We can't just introduce Weibo outside the country, because there's already Twitter, Facebook.

"It doesn't really make sense to compete directly so if Weibo is going abroad, we think maybe if we have just one dedicated area of the product, we can really cut into the market, like TikTok did."