Secretary-General to Interact with Weibo Followers during Upcoming

 

Three-day Visit to China

 

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will start his three-day visit to China on 17 July.  His first activity in Beijing will be to communicate with followers of the United Nations channel on Sina Weibo, the most popular Chinese-language microblogging platform.

The Secretary-General will start to interact with the followers of UN Weibo on 17 July at 7:30 p.m., local time, listening to comments, suggestions and expectations on the work of the United Nations, and answering relevant questions.

Starting on Sunday, Weibo users have submitted more than 3,000 questions about the United Nations, the role of the Secretary-General and various global issues on the world body’s agenda, such as the Syria crisis, youth unemployment and human rights.  People are encouraged to keep sending questions on the Weibo platform (http://talk.weibo.com/ft/201207176330) throughout the conversation.

The 45-minute conversation will be conducted in English and simultaneously interpreted into Chinese.  It will be hosted by Yang Lan, one of China’s most famous talk show hosts, and webcast live on Weibo, which has more than 350 million registered users.  The event will also be recorded as an episode of Ms. Yang’s signature show, Yang Lan One on One, and broadcast across satellite and terrestrial television networks, covering to more than 879 million viewers throughout the greater China region.

The Secretary-General has always attached great importance to his communication with the public, especially youth, and with the rise of social media, he actively takes advantage of these platforms.  Last September, Mr. Ban became the first Secretary-General to present himself on social media and interact directly with Internet users around the world through Weibo, Facebook, Twitter and Livestream.  In that event, of the more than 6,000 questions raised by global Internet users, about half were from UN Weibo, whose followers now exceed 2 million.

This will be the Secretary-General’s fifth visit to China since taking office in 2007.

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For information media • not an official record