In 2010, government micro-bloggers were mainly opened by departments and officials of public security, tourism, publicity and justice. In 2011, the distribution was more even and covered other fields such as education, culture and sports.

The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, the Chinese International Search and Rescue Team and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were the top three government micro-bloggers on Sina Weibo, in terms of both followers and other indicators.

The top 10 government department accounts had 10.3 million followers with a total of 46,000 posts, while the top 10 accounts of individual officials had 10.8 million followers with 44,000 posts.

In addition, the number of verified accounts of government departments and individual officials on Tencent Weibo, another major micro-blogging service provider in China, exceeded 18,000 at the end of September 2011, with nearly 300 accounts operated by high-level government agencies and senior officials.

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