More and more Chinese government agencies are making their presence known by using instant messaging service WeChat to connect with the public.
In a report by the Global Times, the number of government offices using the instant messaging service has increased dramatically in 2014.
Active WeChat government accounts were at least 17,217 from last checking, said a report from Xinhua. The number is a huge jump from the previous year.
In 2013, only 3,600 WeChat accounts were traced back to government agencies, noted by the Communication University of China (CUC). This number almost doubled after a three-month period. In March 2014, there were 6,000 WeChat accounts connected to these agencies.
An estimated 20 percent of the 17,000 or so WeChat handles are by organizations of the Communist Party of China (CPC), congress and some committees of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
In the past year, the number of government-handled WeChat accounts have ballooned because even the offices from the central ministries and lower-level agencies have taken efforts in maximizing the service to reach the public and resolve issues.
The WeChat account "gcdyweixin" is operated by Xinhua for the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee. The account is utilized to inform and update the public on different news and current events pertaining to Party organizations.
Not only that, but it also covers sharing information on Chinese classics, history and culture and is even used to introduce members of the CPC to the public.
In 2014 alone, more than 30 million pieces of information were sent by the government accounts until Nov. 30.
It seemed that the Chinese government is maximizing the power of social media. According to the same report, microblogging sites Sina Weibo and Tencent Microblog have 277,000 accounts handled by government agencies by the end of November and 219 of these were operated by the central government.