China’s Sina is preparing to release an English version of its microblogging platform Weibo and go head on against Twitter.

The service is expected to be launched in about 2-3 months and it will be the first Chinese social networks to be launched in the U.S. in English.

Sina’s Weibo is hugely popular in China and has more than 140 million registered users and expects to top 200 million users by the end of the year.

According to Hitwise, Sina Weibo accounted for 1 in every 158 Internet visits in China for April 2011. This makes China one of the most voracious micro-blogging nations worldwide, with a greater market share of visits going to microblogging sites in China than in the UK, US, France, Canada, Australia or India.