But the truth is that China needs more than online talking shops for people to ‘vent’ their frustrations because, if they are to be effective, those talking shops must be connected to real mechanism that empower the people against the state.

As things stand the Party, quite explicitly, always comes first. The police, the law courts, the banks, the officials, the newspaper and the websites – the Constitution itself – all serve the interests of the Party over the people.

China may have no intention in embracing Western-style democracy – maybe they are right that such a system is not appropriate to China – but if not democracy, then some mechanism must be found give the people a stake in the way they are governed.

If that doesn’t happen – and reasonably quickly – then, as Prof Yu concludes: “Great social upheaval may thus occur, and the existing social and political orders are likely to be destroyed.”