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This is a series of articles published by Kai Fu Lee. I did the translation after graduation from university in summer to learn more about the technology trend and practise my translation skill.

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Translation of Kaifu Lee’s post on LinkedIn - Why Weibo Technology Will Change China

李开复LinkedIn文章翻译之二 – 为什么微博技术会改变中国？

Over the past three years, Weibo has taken China by storm. Weibo literally means micro-blog, and some have called Weibo the Chinese Twitter. But more accurately, Weibo is a 500-character Twitter with Facebook look-and-feel, in a country with very few high-quality traditional media. Weibo is offered by several companies, with Sina having a leadership position.

过去三年里，微博像风暴一样席卷了中国。微博实际上指的是微博客，有些人称其为中国的推特。但是，更准确的说，微博是一个在高质量传统媒体极少的国家里，有500字符上限以及Facebook外观和感觉的推特。好几个公司都有微博服务，而新浪处于领先地位。

More specifically, the 500-character comes from the fact that 140 characters in Chinese is as expressive as 500 characters in English. Compared to Twitter, Weibo has a structured (e.g., nested dialogs) + media-rich (easy to enjoy photo/video/music without leaving the page) approach, which made it more approachable for the many amateur netizens in China. Finally, in a country where traditional media lacks of brand and expressiveness, Weibo is particularly welcome as a breath of fresh air.

更明确地说，500字符是源于中文的140个字符和英文的500字符能够表达的东西差不多这样一个事实。与推特相比，微博有一个结构化的（例如，嵌套式的对话）和富媒体的（很方便地在页面内享受照片/视频/音乐）接入方式，这些使得它对中国的许多业余网民来说更容易接受。最后，在一个传统媒体缺乏品牌和表达力的国度里，微博像一股新鲜空气一样特别受欢迎。

Weibo posts can get deleted, but almost all the time you can say almost anything you’d like, and what you say could be heard by millions. That’s more freedom of speech than ever enjoyed by the Chinese people.

微博的帖子可以被删掉，但大多数时候你可以说你想说的一切，你说的话可能被成千上万的人听到。这是中国民众所享受过的更大的言论自由。

As a result, there are now over 300 million registered users. Weibo has become the preferred platform for product marketing, entertainer adoration, commercial fights, ideology debates, and real-time news dissemination. It is on Weibo that we first heard about virtually all current events, as well as many cases of corruption and injustice. Weibo is providing an equalized and transparent platform for all citizens, and is changing China deeply and quickly. I will report on more interesting Chinese events learned through Weibo via LinkedIn. Stay tuned.

结果，（微博）现在已经有超过3亿的注册用户。微博已经成为产品营销，艺人崇拜，商业斗争，观念争论和实时新闻传播的首选平台。正是在微博上，我们第一时间听到几乎所有的时事，还有与贪腐和不公正相关的各种事件。微博为所有公民提供了一个均等的、透明的平台，并且正在深入地、迅速地改变着中国。我会通过LinkedIn报道更多通过微博了解的有趣的中国时事。敬请关注！