While Chinese citizens are banned from accessing social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, Chinese officials have no problem with using these sites as mediums for self-promotion.

According to New Straits Times, a number of state-affiliated agencies such as the CCTV broadcast network, The People's Daily and Xinhua News, all maintain Twitter accounts.

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In addition, Zhejiang's largest city, Hangzhou, has also turned to Facebook to promote itself.

In an effort to boost the city's popularity, they devised a "Modern Marco Polo" contest wherein participants would have to promote the city on global social media sites, Facebook and Twitter for a year. The winner would reportedly be awarded €40,000, roughly equivalent to $55,000 and given a two-week all-expense paid trip to Hangzhou.

According to reports, the local government of Hangzhou had hired the services of a firm based in Hong Kong to administer the contest.

Promoter of the contest and consultant for a public relations firm, Michael Cavanaugh said that China's use of global social media sites was unavoidable.

However, he declined to comment when asked about how Chinese citizens could join the contest when they couldn't access the site, Agence France-Press reported.

Last month, Facebook announced through a statement made by Vaughan Smith, vice president for corporate development, that they are interested in assisting the Chinese agencies in promoting their cities.

There have been speculations of meetings occurring between officials from China and Facebook on the opening of a sales office in Beijing. These speculations have been supported by reports of Facebook job postings for Beijing-based applicants.

Global social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have been banned in China since 2009.

On the other side of the coin, Chinese netizens are outraged at this double standard.

In an incident reported by the Southern Metropolis Daily, the locals grew angry when they found that they could not access the links posted on Shaanxi province's Weibo account (Twitter's Chinese counterpart) regarding the announcement of their opening a Facebook, Twitter and YouTube account.

To make matters worse, a Shaanxi representative replied and explained that their announcement was not intended for local tourists.

In response to this, an online comment read, "This way of thinking is discriminatory against Chinese people. It shows a lack of understanding of the basic rules of tourism promotion. It's very stupid and quite laughable."

TagsYouTube, Zhejiang