He Shuifa, a member of the country's top political advisory body, finds a quiet spot outside of meeting rooms whenever he can.

At this year's CPPCC sessions, He keeps himself busy sending short messages to online readers through his mobile phone.

"We discussed the speech delivered by Jia Qinglin and members in my group enthusiastically raised the issues that concerned them," He, from Zhejiang province, wrote about the CPPCC National Committee chairman's speech.

He, 46, is one of a growing number of CPPCC members who have turned to microblogging to reach out to the country's Internet community this year.

The online trend differs from a traditional blog by being much smaller in content and file size. A microblog entry can be made up of just a short sentence.

"I think it is one of the most effective ways for people to understand the meetings through my personal experience. The more information we provide, the more trust we, as CPPCC members, get from people," He said.

He joked to China Daily that he can also be considered a reporter because he takes down notes for his readers as soon as he can.

So far, He has more than 26,000 online fans. His microblog not only facilitates his communication with netizens these days, it has also helped him gather their suggestions and concerns when he was preparing his proposals for CPPCC meetings.

Late last month, he solicited ideas from netizens through his microblog even after he had written two detailed proposals concerning urban planning. He picked three issues on culture and education out of the flood of responses from readers and included them in the proposal.

Gong Hanlin, a CPPCC member who is also a well-known skit and sitcom actor, opened his microblog before the meeting as well.

His microblogs, unlike his performances, were serious postings about issues of concern.

"I read each piece of feedback at night. It is our responsibility to reflect people's opinions and voice them during the meeting," Gong said.

Still, a number of netizens have expressed concern that CPPCC members are microblogging just to be "trendy".

Several CPPCC members - as well as a number of NPC deputies - have attracted public attention for starting personal blogs during previous sessions but seldom updating their websites.