BEIJING - Chinese social media giant Sina Weibo will leverage its platform strengths and connections to promote sustainable development.

At the company's annual gala Monday night, Weibo's Chairman Cao Guowei said that the Twitter-like company would partner with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to promote sustainable development at the start of a public welfare campaign for 2017.

Weibo will allocate resources worth over 20 million yuan ($2.90 million) to support UNDP work to achieve its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to Cao.

Social media is playing an increasing role in encouraging public participation in public welfare causes, and Weibo's significant media and celebrity resources and active user interaction can help make SDGs a public topic, according to Patrick Haverman, UNDP deputy country director.

Weibo's official public welfare account became one of the country's first accredited online fund-raising information platforms last year, and is used to motivate influential users to promote public welfare causes using modern methods such as live streaming.

More than 16,000 public-welfare-related topics were mentioned on Weibo in 2016, with about 1,100 celebrities and 8,500 enterprises spreading goodwill messages, attracting about seven million people to donate.

Weibo had about 300 million monthly active users and over 130 million daily active users by the end of September, according to the company's Q3 financial report.