Microblogging in China The website's layout, API, and mode of use was highly similar to Twitter, which was created earlier in 2006. Fanfou's users increased from 0.3 million to 1 million in the first half of 2009. The users included HP China, the "Southern Weekly", artist Ai Weiwei, writer Lian Yue () and TV commentator Liang Wendao (). Some other weibo services, such as Jiwai, Digu, Zuosa and Tencent's Taotao were launched in 2006-2009. After the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, the CPC government shut down most of the domestic weibo services, including Fanfou and Jiwai. Many popular non China-based microblogging services such as
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