Microblogging in China in spreading the news quickly and discussing and evaluating government response. In 2012, there were 309 million people microblogging in China. "Wei boke" (微博客) and "weixing boke" (微型博客), commonly abbreviated as "weibo" (微博), are Chinese words for "microblog". A China-based microblogging service often names itself a weibo by putting it after the name of the service (e.g. Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo). A similar word "围脖" () is used as Internet slang for "weibo". Fanfou () is the earliest notable weibo service. It was launched in Beijing on May 12, 2007 by the co-founder of Xiaonei (now Renren) Wang Xing ().
Internet censorship in China AIDS activist, Hu Jia asked netizens in mainland China to wear black T-shirts on June 4 to oppose censorship and to commemorate the date. Chinese web services such as Weibo eventually censored searches of both “black shirt” and “Big Yellow Duck” in 2013. This has aggravated anti-western sentiment amongst some Chinese bloggers. One blogger, Zhou Xiaoping argued in an essay "Nine Knockout Blows in America's Cold War Against China," that American culture was "eroding the moral foundation and self-confidence of the Chinese people." According to Chinese studies expert Johan Lagerkvist, scholars Pierre Bourdieu and Michel de Certeau argue that this