On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined Chinese microblogging site Weibo ahead of his visit to China later this month. Within ten hours, he gathered a following of more than 26,500 followers on the site which is considered to be the Chinese version of Twitter.

"Hello China! Looking forward to interacting with Chinese friends through Weibo", was his first communication on the website.

His second communication spoke of peace in Asia, and his reverence to Buddha. "I wish everyone happiness on Buddha's Birthday. Today we remember Buddha's ideals and commands, he preached the ideals of harmony and brotherhood and had a vision of a peaceful world. Buddhism is a unifying force across Asian countries. It can be one form of strong cohesion as the world enters the Asian era," he wrote.

Despite the followers, his debut on Weibo, however, was not as welcome as the PMO would have imagined. Some followers subjected the PM to racial slurs, calling him 'Ah-San', a derogatory Chinese term for Indians that dates back to British-era colonialism.

Some more followers also said that Tibet belonged to China, and that India must give up Zangnan, a region in South Tibet that falls in Arunachal Pradesh, over which China and India have had several disagreements, along with a border war in 1962. "Tibet belongs to China", "Zangnan belongs to China" were popular choruses on the webiste.

Weibo is said to be the largest micro-blogging site of the country with over 140 million users.

Modi is expected to undertake a visit to China in the middle of this month, his first to the country as prime mnister. Earlier, as Gujarat chief minister, he had travelled to China a number of times.