Hu Jintao's microblog: What can we expect?

Update: Looks like Hu Jintao's account might not have been so "authentic" after all. The WSJ reports that "VIP guests on the People’s Daily’s popular “Strong Country” online forum -- which would include Hu Jintao -- were automatically registered for People’s Daily microblogging accounts, perhaps without their consent or knowledge." People's Daily is now suspending accounting until checking with people that they actually want to be microbloggers. We get the feeling Hu might be a bit busy.

Their relationship may be tense and strained at the moment, but Hu Jintao appears to be an admirer of U.S. President Barack Obama's next-gen policies. The Chinese leader has taken a play from the Obama school of 21st century communication, and gotten himself online. His Web 2.0 weapon of choice? The microblog. 

People’s Daily, the central mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China (CCP), recently launched its own microblog/Twitter clone to compete in Chinese microblogging. Like Twitter, celebrities are jumping on the new party platform, and Hu Jintao is one of the latest to open an account.

"Yesterday, a new special name appeared on the ‘People's Microblog’ which was launched this month -- the country's chairman, Hu Jintao,” says a post on Tom.com. “The ‘人’ was marked on 'Hu Jintao's' microblog, showing that this user had been authenticated by People's Daily."

We look forward to hearing about what Hu had for breakfast, who he thinks will win American Idol, and seeing some fuzzy phone pics of his latest Friday night out on the tiles.

More likely though, as the new site is so closely linked with the government, we’ll get a steady flow of national news and policy updates. Considering he already has over 14,000 followers without posting a single message, anything he writes will likely be acclaimed as newsworthy.