Welcome to Weibo world: Stephen Hawking’s Chinese social media account attracts a million followers on first day
World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking attracted more than a million followers after he launched his own Weibo social media account on the mainland yesterday.
His first post, published at 10.12am in both English and Chinese, said: “Greetings to my friends in China! It has been too long!”
It has been almost 10 years since his last visit to China, when he took part in a physics conference in Beijing.
“It was an extraordinary experience,” he wrote, noting that his first trip in China was in 1985.
Hawking’s Weibo account attracted more than 140,000 followers in 30 minutes and 1.3 million by 6pm.
He received a warm welcome, with some social media users saying they were amazed at being able to follow Hawking on the Twitter-like service.
“In my physical travels, I have only been able to touch the surface of your fascinating history and culture,” Hawking wrote in his post. “But now I can communicate with you through social media.”
The British academic – who for 30 years held the Cambridge University Lucasian Chair of Mathematics once held by Isaac Newton – is confined to a wheelchair because of a degenerative motor neuron disease and communicates via a sensor on his cheek muscle to drive to a speech-generating device.
He said he hoped to share more about his life and his work with Chinese internet users on the new website. He added: “[I] hope to learn from you in reply.”
His greeting was forwarded more than 235,000 times and attracted more than 230,000 comments.
He received a warm welcome from the flood of followers. “Great scientist, welcome to Weibo,” former Google China chief and influential microblogger Lee Kai-fu wrote in a comment.
