Last September, at the height of the scandal over melamine-tainted milk, rumours began to spread that Baidu had accepted payment to expunge stories on the subject from its search results.

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Since the last election, the public has put up with revelations involving tainted beef, bad milk, health-and-safety risks at theme parks, cushy contracts for road-related companies, and the revelation that cracks in many nuclear reactors had gone unreported and unrepaired for more than a decade.

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The Sina Weibo sensation, for example, has fused in the minds of ordinary Chinese people the inequities of state crony quasi-capitalism, the deaths of babies drinking tainted milk and people dying in a bullet train derailment.

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Thirty-six other people, mostly children, were taken to hospital after drinking the tainted milk.

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