China’s foreign ministry has started yet another new channel to spread propaganda targeting the country’s younger generation, but netizens’ reception seemed to suggest that further work would be needed for the purpose.

An account named “Office of the Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs” was set up on Bilibili on Sunday. As at 9 p.m. on Monday, a total of 309,000 fans have been attracted to view four video clips shared by the new account.

Also known as B site, Bilibili is a Shanghai-based video sharing website where users can submit, view or add overlaid commentaries on videos, most of which are about animation, comics and games.

In the first video, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin introduced the new member to the office’s media circle. He appealed to netizens to learn more about China’s diplomacy through Bilibili, in addition to other social media platforms like WeChat, Weibo and other video-sharing mobile apps including TikTok and Kuaishou.

However, it appeared that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs needed to put a little bit more effort into tapping the pulse of young people.

A netizen told the officials in the comment section that the Bilibili site is best for videos with a 16:9 aspect ratio and no background music, and reminded them not to forget subtitles. Another netizen warned that long videos would affect the number of views.

Others suggested that the videos on the Bilibili account were directly duplicated from TikTok, a ByteDance-owned video sharing app blocked in China.

Another netizen even found a watermark of Guancha.cn, a news portal in China, in the corner of one video, questioning whether the ministry had stolen images from the news website.

Bilibili was listed on the Nasdaq in 2018. The latest financial figures showed that the average monthly active users hit 197.2 million and mobile monthly active users reached 183.5 million as of the end of September last year.

Click here for Chinese version

---------------------------------

Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app: bit.ly/2yMMfQE

To download the latest version,

iOS: bit.ly/AD_iOS

Android: bit.ly/AD_android

Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play