China's central bank opens Wechat account

BEIJING - The People's Bank of China (PBOC) launched its Wechat public account on Friday as a new channel of policy communication with the public.

"Through this public account, we will release official information, interpret financial policies and introduce financial knowledge," PBOC governor Yi Gang said in the first post of the account.

The new platform will help people better understand the work of the central bank and facilitate the submission of opinions and suggestions on its work by the public, Yi said in the post.

"We will continue to enrich and improve the communication between the PBOC and the public, and enhance the transparency and credibility of our policies," he added.

The first post, which was released at around 8 am, was read over 90,000 times and received over 1,600 likes within 1.5 hours.

In late 2013, the central bank opened an account on China's twitter-like platform Weibo, and now the account has over 2,200 posts and 3.17 million followers.