Chairman Mao used to say: ''As communists we gain control with the power of the gun and maintain control with the power of the pen.'' You can see propaganda and the control of ideology as an authoritarian society's most important task. Before the internet, all people could do was watch TV or read the People's Daily. They would carefully read between the lines to see what had happened. Now it is different. The papers try to talk about things but even before they appear, everyone has talked about it on the internet.

I still think Gorbachev's revolution in Russia - glasnost - was more important. Openness and transparency are the only way to limit these dark powers. Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions; in the constitution it says you can but in the real world it is dangerous. In the West people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.

"As communists we gain control with the power of the gun and maintain control with the power of the pen" ... Chairman Mao. Credit:AP

Even though we had reform and opening, ''opening'' didn't mean ''openness''; it meant opening the door to the West. It was more practical than ideological. At the very beginning, nobody - even in the West - could predict the internet would have so much to do with freedom of speech and that social media would develop in the way it has. They just understood it was a more efficient, fast and powerful means of communication.

But since we got the net and could write blogs - and now microblogs - people have started to share ideas, and a new sense of freedom has arisen. Of course, it varies from silly posts about what you've had for breakfast to serious discussions of the news. But, either way, people are learning to exercise their rights. It is a unique, treasured moment. People have started to feel the breeze. The internet is a wild land with its own games, languages and gestures through which we are starting to share common feelings.