Beijing municipal officials are being trained to use China's fast-growing social media scene in the latest government move to monitor public opinion, the Legal Mirror said Thursday.

The city's Communist Party of China school is offering the training to "bureau-level leading cadres" in order to help "leaders catch up with Internet currents."

The training will "raise cadres' understanding of information dissemination, and social and public sentiment in order to better respond to sudden crises," it said.

Chinese blogs, chat rooms and other sites have become lively outlets for expression with the general public.

The training at the Beijing Party school will focus on micro-blogging, the news report said.

It will include "what is micro-blogging; how to browse blogs and micro-blogs; what is MSN all about; which BBS (bulletin board system) sites and posts are most popular; and which search en-gines to use to find hot topics in society."

Some local governments have set up micro-blog accounts to get their message out.