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BBC Chinese: Chinese Official Media Gaining Ground on Facebook

BBC Chinese recently reported that official Chinese media channels such as the People’s Daily (newspaper) and CCTV (Chinese Central Television) are gaining popularity on the English Facebook platform. People’s Daily enjoys 18,923,312 followers, surpassing the New York Times. And CCTV has 25,838,015 followers, surpassing CNN. Most of the posts by these two channels are related to Chinese sightseeing, panda pictures and cultural reports. Sometimes there could be some news regarding South China Sea events and the U.S. Presidential Election. The front page stories these two carry in China never appear on Facebook. In the meantime, western studies raised some doubts. For example, a quarter of the People’s Daily followers were from India and Pakistan, as well as 12 million followers from Myanmar, which is one sixth of that country’s population. Facebook is blocked in China, so no Chinese domestic netizens can even read Facebook – very few can bypass the Great Firewall.
Source: BBC Chinese, May 18, 2016
http://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/china/2016/05/160518_china_state_media_facebook