Her resume, however, does include a seven-year stint with institutes and companies linked to the Chinese military - from 1987 to 1994.
That has social media users in China concerned she has ties to the country`s Communist Party and state surveillance apparatus, potentially leading to yet further controls over the microblogging platform.
Twitter is blocked in China. It is still used by Chinese dissidents or anyone else hoping to circumvent the country`s firewall to get unfettered access to information or to post information from inside China. Chinese users trying to access the service do so using Virtual Private Networks (VPN) that digitally relocate their computer, tablet or smartphone to an address outside of China.
The Communist Party, which controls the flow of information in the country, does so via the so-called `Great Firewall`, strict editorial guidelines for private news outlets, active censorship and monitoring. Weibo, a local platform similar to Twitter, is used by millions of Chinese but is highly censored and monitored through state surveillance operations. The country also operates strictly run state media channels.
After Chen`s appointment, both the state-run CCTV news and the China Xinhua News agency tweeted messages at her. She then tweeted back to express her hopes that her new company would establish closer ties with the government-run news outlets.
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