WHILE China’s first Nobel peace prize laureate, Liu Xiaobo, still languishes in prison, and the artist and provocateur-in-chief, Ai Weiwei, still appeals more to a foreign audience, a new group of local activists are tweaking the tail of the Communist Party. Perhaps chief among them is a former sports writer, Li Chengpeng. Mr Li has recently stirred up a storm with a new book entitled “Everybody in the World Knows”, a collection of sharp essays on his country’s social ills. During a book tour in January he was mobbed by his fans, physically attacked by his enemies and, eventually, silenced by the Chinese authorities.

Thousands of supporters turned out to meet the author in Chengdu, Beijing and Shenzhen. On January 12th, just before his book-signing in Chengdu, Mr Li announced to his 6.7m followers on Sina Weibo, China’s home-grown version of Twitter: “I am not allowed to speak, not allowed to give opening remarks, I am not even allowed to wish you a happy new year.” Instead he wore a black mask over his mouth and the words “I love you all” written on his shirt. The crowd roared its approval, and snapped up copies of his book by the armload.

His reception in Beijing went less smoothly. One self-proclaimed Maoist hurled a kitchen knife at him and another punched him in the face. Some Maoists regard him as a traitor for his criticism of the Communist Party. After further cries of treason at the book-signing in Shenzhen, the police have chosen to rein in Mr Li. He texted a reporter to explain that he was being taken away for “a chat”. An appearance in Guangzhou was suddenly cancelled.

Mr Li is no stranger to threats and government pressure. Working as a sports writer from the early 1990s, he focused on corruption in sport, culminating in a book in 2010 called “Chinese Football: The Inside Story”. It detailed match-fixing and bribery across the country and brought down the wrath of angry trainers, “patriotic readers” and government censors.

Soon after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, which killed more than 80,000 people, Mr Li moved from sports reporting to writing essays on politics and society. He went on to publish a novel in 2011, entitled “Li Kele Protests Demolitions”, which became an immediate hit. His descriptions, in fiction and non-fiction, of ordinary people uniting to fight venal, faceless forces propelled him into the arms of a more organised new audience: China’s advocates for social reform.

Later that year Mr Li said that he would be running for public office in Chengdu as an independent. Although his election campaign was never allowed to get under way (candidates for office are carefully screened by the Communist Party), he gained new credibility. Here, it seemed, was a rare man who would back up his words with actions.

At the book launch in Chengdu an elderly man named Liu Shahe sat behind Mr Li. Mr Liu is one of the signatories of Charter 08, the document demanding a list of political reforms that Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel laureate, was jailed for drafting. Mr Li tweeted Mr Liu’s message to him—“you, man of words, just keep writing”—and said the encouragement from the older man had reduced him to tears.

Since then Mr Li has turned down the volume a notch. In a blogpost he urged his fans to pay attention to “bigger issues” like corruption, food safety and pollution and not focus so much on him and his book. But in an age short of heroes, the Chinese public still loves to hear someone who dares to speak truth to power.