Bill Gates opens account in Chinese social media

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has opened his account on China's social media Wechat and posted a 30-second  video in Mandarin.

In his first post on the social networking app, the American billionaire and philanthropist said hello in Chinese and said he would "share about the people I meet, books I'm reading and what I'm learning".

The video, posted on February 11, has already been viewed more than 100,000 times and received over 10,000 likes, state-run China Daily reported.

He plans to share content including global health, energy innovation and education reform through the account.

Gates' decision to join China's content market is no doubt a blow for the many accounts purporting to spread success articles in his name, the Daily report said.
The 61-year-old world's richest man has long been an idol in China.

His anecdotes and quotations, too numerous to distinguish what's real and fake, never lost their appeal to Chinese readers over the past two decades, it said.
Founding software company Microsoft in 1975 Gates frequently dominated the top spot of Forbes world's wealthiest people.

After retiring from Microsoft in 2008, he focused on managing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chaired, with his wife, and announced that he would donate his USD 58 billion personal fortune to the foundation.

The tycoon's legendary life has won him millions of Chinese fans and anything he says is regarded as a classic, making him a valuable addition to China's rising content industry, the daily said.

Opening a social media account in China shows that the business mogul attaches importance to the nation's content market, it said.

China is also one of the areas of most concern to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has an office in Beijing, it said.