Luhan, the 'Chinese Justin Bieber' crashes China's social networks announcing new relationship

Luhan, a Chinese popstar dubbed as the Chinese equivalent of Justin Bieber, has literally broken the internet by announcing his new relationship with a Chinese actress on Weibo, causing China's biggest social media networks to crash.

Source: Luhan

On the last day of China's eight-day-long national holiday, as SBS PopAsia reports, on 8th October, former member of Korean band EXO, Luhan, introduced his girlfriend on his official Weibo account, writing "Hello everyone, I am introducing my girlfriend" before tagging the Weibo account of mega-popular Chinese actress Guan Xiao Tong.

Source: Weibo

In response to Luhan's surprising Weibo post, Guan Xiao Tong replied with a heart and "Aiya, so awesome!"

Source: weibo

Confirmed by both Lu and Guan's management team, the news not only left thousands of Lu's fans "heartbroken," but also caused Sina Weibo (a micro-blog site that is the Chinese equivalent to Twitter) to crash temporarily, due to his massive popularity and enormous influence in China's entertainment sector.

Weibo's official customer service account acknowledged that its mobile app was experiencing abnormalities, including failure to refresh pages and comments, "due to reasons everyone shall know."

Source: weibo

Lu's relationship post hit the top of trending topics, with over 4.57 million likes and 2.18 million comments.

This is not the first time the 27-year-old entertainer has caused social media earthquakes.

Lu currently holds the Guinness World Record holder for the "Most Comments on a Weibo Post," which was established on 10 September 2012 by a post celebrating the singer’s favourite football team, English Premier League side Manchester United.

It first achieved the record after registering a staggering 13,163,859 comments. As of 2 September 2015, the same post had clocked up 100,252,605 responses (and still counting), having risen by an unbelievable 87,088,746 comments.

In 2016, Luhan also set a second Guinness World Record for the "Largest gathering of people wearing antlers" at the 2016 LuHan Reloaded China Tour, in Beijing.

Therefore a term known as "the Luhan effect" entered the lexicon as a way to describe the singer, dancer and actor’s ever-growing popularity and influence in today's China.

The Beijing local, who has now over 40.9 million Weibo followers, has become the highest ranked male celebrity in China, ranked 2nd on the Forbes China Celebrity 100 list in 2017.

Lu Han's influence is even extending into Australia as SBS PopAsia records how he was adored by fans when he was filming the Chinese version of reality show "Running Man" Down Under in 2015.