Ministry of Foreign Affairs opens WeChat account

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs released its official Weixin, or WeChat account, on May 7.

Weixin, chat software for mobile phones that enables users to communicate with each other through voice messages, videos, pictures and texts for free, has gained popularity among quite a lot of Chinese mobile phone users since it was launched by Tencent in 2011.

"Foreign Affairs Xiao Lingtong" is the first official Weixin account released by a central government department.

"This is a new platform and a new starting point," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its website.

Since 2011, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has set up several micro-blogging accounts with the user name "Foreign Affair Xiao Lingtong" on micro-blogging platforms, including Sina Weibo, People.com.cn and qq.com.