U.S. President Barack Obama has done it. Pope Francis also has one. On Wednesday afternoon, it was the turn of Chinese President Xi Jingping to make a selfie.

In a social media sense, it was actually a groupie since he posed beside Indonesian Parliament Deputy Speaker Fadli Zon who took the shot and posted it on the same day on Twitter.

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On Friday, the photo became viral in major websites in China. In Weibo, it was shared more than 30,000 times.

The selfie gave a different perspective of the Chinese president known for his anti-corruption campaign. It helped that he had a smile on his face, although the bigger smile was on Zon who took the photo at the opening ceremony of the Asian-African Summit 2015 in Jakarta.

His unfamiliarity with the word of the year in 2013 was evident that one Weibo member advised, "Big Daddy, you should take selfies from a high position and at a 45-degre-angle," quotes the Telegraph.

Perhaps he could also get some pointers from Obama who even has a selfie stick that he recently used to convince young Americans to sign up for his pet project, the ObamaCare health plan.

Or maybe from Brit politicians like David Cameron and Ed Miliband who were shooting groupies with voters during the last campaign. But it could also backfire as Cameron noted that during political gatherings, Brit voters would rather spend the time taking selfies with political figures rather than discussing issues.

Xi actually has an Instagram account with 272,000 followers. The photo-sharing website would be an ideal place to display his improvement in taking selfies, unfortunately the operators of Instagram blocked the service in China in July 2014 in response to the "Umbrella Movement" protest in Hong Kong.

Normally, it is China that blocks western websites in a bid to control what its more than 600 million netizens read and see. Twitter, where the image initially was posted, is blocked in China, notes BBC.

Most of the comments on Twitter were understandably from Indonesia where the popular microblogging site is not banned. There was one comment by a Chinese named Zhang, who tweeted, "Not easy to get a selfie with #XiJinping, surrounded by entourage, plus he's tall."

TagsSelfie, #XiJinping