Despite concerns of the Chinese government about its recently recognized Internet Addiction Disorder, there is little doubt that the web is now part of life for the country's 298 million netizens, as well as an evident piece of the government's communications strategy. One obvious example that we noticed last year is Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's Facebook page, which can now boast about having more than 98,000 supporters.
Following Chinese President Hu Jintao's brief online chat in June, Wen held a live chat of his own last week. Thousands of questions poured in from China (and the rest of the world), according to AFP's news report, which also says Wen was questioned on a range of topics:
"… with some querying the amount he earned, how long he slept a day, and how much alcohol he could drink, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
But Wen chose not to answer those, focusing instead on the more serious issues of the economic crisis, China's healthcare reform and the shoe-throwing incident that took place in Cambridge, Britain, this month."
The China Digital Times has translated to English a lot of text from Wen’s live chat, available here.
Given the opportunity, what would you ask the Chinese premier?
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