ARAB REVOLUTION that was powered by social media has most probably kicked a storm in China as well. According to reports, the number of microbloggers has quadrupled in 2011 compared to the last year in China where Facebook and Twitter are blocked, and the country has its own version of ‘YouTube.’

The Baltimore Sun Newspaper said that nearly half of all Chinese Internet users are now taking to the near-instant service to gather news and spread views. Two firms run popular microblogging platforms, famous as ‘Weibo’ in China that allows users to send short messages of a maximum 140 characters to their followers. These firms, Sina Corp and Tencent Holdings claim to have more than 200 million users.

An answer to Twitter, Weibo was flooded by comments, criticism after the Wenzhou train crash last year. “There are already over ten million comments about the accident, nearly all of them angry, and in user-created polls, netizens have again and again showed that they’re angry with how the crash was handled,” reported PO, a tech news website. Even the fears were raised that the tool will leak all the wrong policies of the government. People feared that the government would even clamp down the tool as it is seen to minimise the flow of information out of the country.

According to the paper, the vibrant discussion and rapid dissemination of information on Weibo caused hand-wringing within the Communist Party, which fears that losing control of information and opinion could threaten its authority. “In December, city governments announced rules to regulate microblogging operators, requiring new users to register with their real names,” it said. The measure was introduced as the government believed that people would be less critical while they use their real name but that hardly seems to be the case.

Quoting the report from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the total number of Weibo users rose 296 percent to 249.9 million in 2011 that is nearly half of the Chinese Internet population. In its report, CNNIC has said that by the end of December, there were 513 million Internet users in China, representing an Internet penetration rate of 38.3 percent.

With the penetration of Internet into every household in China, it would be relatively difficult for the country to hold its grip on the dissemination of information. If it tries to block these sites, anger that people would have expressed there would definitely pour onto the streets, which in no case will be good for the country. At the same time, selective information leak that the country has been doing for years would comes to its close and the bloggers would inform the world about the happenings in the country.