@hujintao gives up on tweeting

Chinese President Hu Jintao has mysteriously given up on micro-blogging before ever really getting started.  China’s President startled the internet at the weekend by opening a micro-blog – the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. Fascinated netizens began signing up at the rate of more than ten people a minute. But a day later the account of ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.
STR/AFP/Getty Images
STR/AFP/Getty Images
STR/AFP/Getty Images

Chinese President Hu Jintao has mysteriously given up on micro-blogging before ever really getting started. 

Chinese President Hu Jintao has mysteriously given up on micro-blogging before ever really getting started. 

China’s President startled the internet at the weekend by opening a micro-blog – the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Fascinated netizens began signing up at the rate of more than ten people a minute. But a day later the account of Hu Jintao disappeared.

A brief pro-forma note this morning on the empty site, hosted by the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily Online, said simply: “This item cannot be found, the author may have erased it.”

That fails to explain the mystery of the president’s missing micro-blog.

Did the famously cautious leader of 1.3 billion people decide he wasn’t ready for such open interaction? Has he joined the ranks of those censored by the Great Firewall of China? Was it a case of identity theft? Had the People’s Daily failed to carry out the proper checks? Or was it a simple computer error.

Hu hadn’t even posted a single tweet or adding a picture (see above photo) to his account. This is a rare instance where the Kremlin seems to be more on the cutting edge than Beijing. 

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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