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Survey reveals influential figures for young people
调查披露年轻人中有影响力人物
A novelist who races cars, the founder of an Internet giant, the son of one of the mainland's richest men —these are the three most popular online celebrities with Chinese college students. That is one of the findings of a year-long survey conducted by researchers at Fudan University.
For the report, 10 researchers tracked about 1,700 Weibo users online for a year, looking at all of their posts and recording who they followed online to find out who the most influential Internet personalities are.
The most talked about and followed celebrity is Han Han, a 32-year-old novelist, film maker and race car driver. He was followed by 27-year-old Wang Sicong, the son of property tycoon Wang Jianlin, who has built up a massive online following with his pointed, often controversial posts about the children of the wealthy and other topics. He has more than 12 million followers on Weibo. Third placed on the list was Ma Yun, or Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba.
"Because of Alibaba's success, many young people idolized Ma Yun and hope they can do the same. Wang Sicong is famous due to his online controversies," Cuishang Guosheng said.
"We have done the research by tracking over 1,000 Weibo users born in the 1990s. For each user, we read all of their posts in the past two years and wrote it into our database, then got the results after analysis," Professor Huang Ronggui with Fudan University said.
Huang says most college students admire people who have a distinct personality and give them motivation to follow their own interests. But some university students questioned the list.
"Actually, I don't really like Wang Sicong, I think he is too high profile online. I like Han Han and I have read many of his novels," Xiao Zihan said.
"I don't understand why my generation is interested in those people, especially Wang Sicong. That's a funny choice," Mao Ling said.
"So far, we think most of the university students like people who seem close to their life. And young people tend to pay more attention to public figures' personality and get inspired by their unique experiences. I think it's because this generation has better living conditions compared to the past, so they have started to pursue other things rather than money," Professor Huang said.
Social scientists say the current generation of college students grew up in a secure environment and have access to advanced technology, so they make up the largest percentage of online users in China.
