Xue Manzi says weibo helped him survive rectal cancer in May. Provided to China Daily

Xue Manzi is one of weibo's biggest fans and it is not hard to see why

For Xue Manzi micro-blogging is about more than just indulging in idle talk or keeping up with what this celebrity or that is doing. For him micro-blogging has become an indispensable tool, one that even touches on matters of life and death.

Xue is one of the biggest users of Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, not surprising perhaps, given that this angel investor (a wealthy person who provides funds for a startup company, usually in exchange for ownership equity) is about to launch a micro-blog magazine called Manzi Digest.

Xue reckons micro blogs expand the possibilities of human achievement, and if you think that that is overblown rhetoric, Xue can relate how weibo helped him survive rectal cancer in May, deliver his new magazine this year, and helps him conduct investments and commit to charities.

Last May, Xue, who now has 1.7 million weibo followers, broke the news to them that he had cancer.

"The purpose was quite simple: I just wanted to seek advice from my weibo friends to cure this disease and remind others that it is important to keep healthy."

Weibo was crucial for Xue, because many followers gave him suggestions he regarded as effective and recommended excellent doctors to him. Later he had surgery that was regarded as successful, and he is still alive to tell the tale with a broad smile.

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, which has been tracking the development of the World Wide Web since 1997, 48.7 percent of Internet users in China, or 250 million people, use micro blogs, making the blogs perhaps the biggest and possibly most lucrative Internet service.

Aware of the popularity of micro blogs and the rise of self-publishing media, Xue embarked on his magazine project. He has also invested in technology companies that are listed in the United States or which aim to do so.

"Once the Manzi Digest is launched, it will be as influential as any other major Chinese media. It will also pose a challenge for them," says Xue, who studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where his major was Chinese diplomacy.

He dropped out and took a job with a trading company in New York, a year short of his graduation.

The purpose of Manzi Digest is simple, he says.

"It is to make micro-blogging more convenient to use. Weibo has become a very important communication channel. In my case, 80 percent of new friends and 90 percent of new investment projects have been made through micro-blogging.

"Yet it contains too much information and you have to spend a lot of time to really find the useful news. Manzi Digest will help categorize the information and help readers save time."

Manzi Digest will mainly contain Xue's weibo messages, which will be under different subject headings, such as politics, history, investment, charity and life.

"I start to edit my Sina Weibo as early as 5 am every day and spend almost one-third of my time (on) Manzi Digest, which will be published daily and will be free. It will mark a new development stage of media and signifies that as an individual you can have your own media platform."

There is no doubt that more and more personal media such as Manzi Digest will emerge in China, he says, because "Chinese people will feel a greater desire to have their own voices heard".

Xue, 58, was born into the family of a senior official and said he led the life of a "noble" until he was 13. His father was a veteran Communist and was vice-mayor of Beijing after the People's Republic was founded in 1949.

In 1980 he started studying at the University of California, Berkeley. One of his first part-time jobs was working as a Chinese translator for Masayoshi Son, a Japanese student who was developing a translation machine. Son founded the Japanese investment group Softbank and became an international investor guru.

The $7,000 Son paid Xue, whose country was in dire poverty in the early 1980s, was a windfall, so he dropped out of university.

In 1991 he invested $250,000 in a telecom equipment company, which was merged with another technology company founded by Chinese graduates from US universities in 1995. The name of the new company was UTStarcom, which made its initial public offering in Nasdaq in 2000.

In the end, Xue made at least $120 million out of the original investment, his co-investor Wu Ying says.

Xue believes the rise of micro-blogging is changing the way we live, including the way business is done.

He is one of the most famous investors in Sina Weibo, and often uses it to judge those who are seeking investment funds from him.

"Through their weibo pages information I can roughly tell their interests and philosophies, which is important to know if I want to know something about them."

Taking out his mobile phone to edit his weibo messages, and wearing a smile that rarely seems to leave his face, he says: "If you want to seek investment from me, open a weibo account first."

Xue says he is not a serious man and treats investment as a side interest. "I think doing investment is like buying antiques. You can make huge profits while you are playing and having fun. All you need is keen insight."

The most important thing for him to look at when considering whether a company is worth investing in is the personal qualities of the company leader, he says.

"For me the leader is the most important asset a company has. As a qualified and promising leader, they must be persistent and flexible. I will also look at whether they treat their family members well, because that usually reflects the way they treats their employees."

As for current Internet investment opportunities, Xue says there will be continued cooling of investment in the Internet over the next few months.

"This is a good thing, because the more sensible and cautious the investment is, the more the companies being invested in are motivated to strengthen their competitive edge."

Xue also makes full use of weibo to develop his charity activities. In February he became one of the most active advocates for a weibo campaign to fight child trafficking, following the initiative of Yu Jianrong, a professor of sociology. He wrote a declaration on Feb 2 calling for people on weibo to help fight the crime.

"As a father of two, I know how desperate parents can be if their children are taken away by criminals. It can destroy a family."

Chen Shiqu, a senior police officer in charge of fighting child trafficking with the Ministry of Public Security and who has became a weibo celebrity because of his efforts in the campaign, said last month that in the past year the ministry had collected more than 1,500 clues on weibo about child trafficking.

(China Daily 01/20/2012 page16)