When Ye Beibei woke up on Monday and read on the internet that there was a protest against censorship, he grabbed his breakfast and jumped in a cab. His lips were still smeared with blueberry jam when he arrived at the offices of Southern Weekend, a local newspaper in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.

“Once I got there, I felt that I must say something,” recalls Mr Ye, a 30-year-old who works for a gay rights group. He mounted a low wall bordering the flower beds and launched into an appreciation of Southern Weekend’s brand of independently minded reporting. He shared with a crowd of about 100 his hopes for political reform and extolled the importance of a free press.

“I have never taken part in an election, I’ve never even set eyes on a ballot, so I don’t know what voice I can have in this country,” he said. “China has so many problems – income inequality, environmental pollution, ethnic tension – if we can’t speak up, how will these problems ever be known and addressed?”