We ran an article a few weeks back entitled You Met Your Expat China Friends on…MySpace?! The author wrote about the magical powers social networks now have to change how you experience people, places, and the ‘personal’ info of random strangers. As usage becomes more widespread (you know your mom is on Facebook), the social utility of these networks spreads beyond finding dates or stalking exes.

Politicians like Barack Obama, Mandela, Nelson, and golden-locked Leonard Farkas (is that hair for real?) have hundreds of thousands, even millions of supporters of their Facebook profiles. And high in the rankings, is China’s cuddliest politician, your Premier and mine (more like my adopted premier), Grandpa Wen, Wen Jiabao.

Wen’s profile went up two days after the Wenchuan earthquake – almost exactly one year ago – and nobody seems clear on who started it. Several Chinese ministries have denied knowledge or responsibility for it over the last year. Since his energetic response to the earthquake, Wen has attracted enormous support, especially from overseas Chinese (Facebook is not as popular with mainland Chinese), and he now has over 100,000 supporters. Someone is updating the profile and so far they’ve been lucky – in Morocco a computer engineer was jailed for creating a profile for the king’s younger brother.

***

Related Links
You Met Your Expat China Friends on…MySpace?!
eChinacities on Facebook
The Pursuit of Liberty, Justice, and Patriotic Kitchenware
The Red Curtain

Warning：The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.