Dalai Lama Uses Twitter to Circumvent Chinese Government

The Dalai Lama, having only been a Twitter user since late February, is already using
 the platform to circumvent Chinese censorship.Today the Tibetan spiritual leader held a one-hour
  question-and-answer session via Twitter to respond to questions submitted by Chinese web users. The Twitter chat was hosted by Chinese writer Wang Lixiong who met with the Dalai Lama in a New York hotel room. The Dalai Lama’s Twitter responses were translated by a Chinese interpreter and tweeted on Lixiong’s Twitter account. A translated portion of the conversation from Lixiong’s Twitter profile can be seen below.

The Twitter chat was a strategic maneuver on behalf of Wang and the Dalai Lama to communicate directly with the Chinese people despite long-time opposition from Chinese officials.

According to the AFP’s report, “Nearly 12,000 people selected the 250 questions by online voting done on a Google Moderator site, which was blocked in China on Thursday.”

Another report writes that, “the Dalai Lama tweeted messages of criticism about the Chinese government’s policies in Tibet and words of welcome to Chinese citizens.”

It’s not known how many Chinese people were able to follow the tweets as Twitter is blocked in China. Still there are an estimated 150,000 people in China who use Twitter, and access to the Dalai Lama’s responses were accessible via third-party Twitter applications.