For anyone living in China in the early 2010s, Weibo, a social media platform akin to Twitter, was a revelation. Almost from nowhere, in one of the most censored societies on earth, a boisterous debate emerged online, offering an alternative window into public opinion than that provided by buttoned-up state media reports.

Often that opinion was angry – about corruption, pollution, a governing system that to many seemed unfair and detached from people’s needs. And for a brief period, with the censors on the back foot, the ‘Weibo Spring’ bore real fruit: officials were sacked after online sleuths exposed ill-gotten wealth, projects were paused or modified due to public backlash and even the all-powerful central government was forced to apologise after a devastating high-speed rail crash in July 2011.

It wasn’t to last. As they had when blogs first emerged in the previous decade, and when the internet itself appeared to threaten the Communist Party’s absolute control on information, the censors reasserted themselves. Weibo was reined in, cleansed of ‘negative energy’ and left a shadow of its former self.

Arriving