Indian PM Modi Deleted His Weibo Account After Banning Chinese Apps

Chinese social network Weibo recently announced it had shut down the Weibo account of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the request of the Indian Embassy in China.

Modi created an account in China’s biggest social network during his visit to the country in 2015. Since then, Modi has continued to use the account to post and interact with Chinese users. Before being shut down, Modi's account has more than 200,000 followers and a total of 100 posts. His posts are usually in Chinese or combined with English.

Modi's account closure notice was issued by the Chinese social network amid India's decision to ban 59 Chinese mobile apps, including Weibo and Tiktok. Of these, the Tiktok app is very popular in India, with nearly 200 million users.

Talking to Reuters, a source from the Indian government said that it took a lot of time to take down Modi's account. “For VIP accounts, Weibo has a more complex procedure to quit which is why the official process was initiated. For reasons best known to the Chinese, there was great delay in granting this basic permission,”, said the source.

According to Reuters, Modi is one of the few foreign leaders who have an account on the social network Weibo. In addition to Mr. Modi, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro also have accounts on this platform.

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