PM Modi Deletes China’s Weibo Account

Article by Suman M Published on: 7:15 am, 2 July 2020

With the Indian government declaring ban on 59 Chinese apps, Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to quit the Chinese microblogging website Sina Weibo, which he had joined a few years ago. It is more like a Twitter account.

On Wednesday, the PM’s account went blank after his profile photo, posts and comments were removed from the handle.

However, quitting this microblogging site involved special efforts as for all VIP accounts, there was a more complex procedure.

An official process was initiated to deactivate the account. Finally, after a lot of delay, permission to deactivate the account was granted.

Before deletion, the PM had 115 posts on Weibo. As the concerned authorities dilly-dallied on the deactivation request, it was decided that they should be deleted manually. After much efforts, 113 posts were removed but two more remained on the website.

The two posts left were posts where Modi posted photos with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

On Weibo, it is difficult to remove posts with the photo of their President which is why two posts still remained. However, now, all the posts on the PM’s handle have been removed.

At present, the PM’s follower count stands at 2,44,000, which was roughly the same when the deletion of posts began.

The decision to ban Chinese apps was taken following border tensions with China in Eastern Ladakh.