Click magnet: Why 73 million Weibo followers hang on Yao Chen's every word

Text: The Sunday Telegraph, UK

Is it like having a superpower," I ask Yao Chen as she raises her coffee cup to her lips. The actress breaks into a broad smile as her translator explains my meaning. "I'm getting more mature," she says, avoiding the question. "These days I am much more careful and cautious."

One could add the word "modest" to that list, because Yao, self-effacing as she is, has more followers on Weibo (the mainland's version of Twitter) than the population of Britain, France or Thailand. That's 73.2 million, in case you were wondering. And when 5 per cent of the population of one of the world's most powerful (not to mention politically sensitive) nations is hanging on your every word, you have a lot of influence, no matter how cautious you are.

In fact, so great is that influence, she has the ability to change the course of people's lives with a click of her mouse. Stories abound of children's operations that were paid for by donations from her Weibo followers, of old ladies who put their entire savings into causes she supports - even of a condemned man who was suddenly hailed as a hero because of her impassioned online defence of his character (he was a friend of her father's).

So how did a 34-year-old from Shishi, a small coastal city in Fujian province, rise from obscurity to become one of magazine's 100 most influential people on the planet? (Forbes ranked her 83rd among the world's most powerful women.) And why has the West never heard of her?

Let's start with the second question. Unlike compatriots Gong Li, Jackie Chan and Fan Bingbing, Yao has never made a Hollywood film and speaks almost no English.