Chinese governments see Wechat numbers rise

Governments at all levels have provided their services through an increased number of platforms on portable digital devices, according to a new report published on Tuesday.

The government accounts at Wechat, a popular social networking platform being widely used on smartphones in China, have surged to 83,000 by the end of August last year, according to the 2015 yearbook of digital government report.

The number is nearly four times greater than that of 2014.

Guangdong province has the most number of accounts. The average number of users for each account has reached 36,000, said the annual report.

The document also showed an increased number of city services that can be accessed by Wechat accounts. More than 250 million users have accessed to the accounts of Wechat set up in 72 cities across the country.

"The e-government services will continue to boom this year. Governments at all levels should lay more emphasis on the functions of e-government systems and make them more applicable for users," said Zhou Deming, deputy head of the E-government Affairs Council.

He suggested governments to step up efforts in collecting basic data and urged them to share the data to build a regional or national data base and make cloud computing of data more applicable.