The fact the con announcement made no less by Kai-Fu Lee, former head of Google China, was reposted 30,000 times by early Monday evening, was a testament of the hunger the Chinese netizens have for the outside world. But alas they knew it late that Mr Lee had just played an April Fool's day prank on them, one that further fuelled the already contained anger and resentment against Chinese internet censorship.

"You shouldn't be so unkind," wrote one Sina Weibo user, where Mr Lee posted his announcement saying that Facebook and Twitter have been made accessible in China.

"Hate you!" another wrote in English, just one of the more than 10,000 comments the post generated, most of which were angry.

"Should have known. That would be too good to be true," one fooled user wrote in response.

On Monday morning, Mr Lee posted the image below on his Weibo profile:

"You can now get on Facebook and Twitter in China! No need to jump over the wall! The image below will tell you how!" he told his million followers.

To add more teeth to his credible prank, the former Google China chief even attached guidelines, directing followers to click the accompanying logos of Facebook and Twitter.

But alas! "I'm in Tapei I'm in Taipei I'm in Taipei," the text read. "Happy April Fool's Day!"

Mr Lee enjoys a certain level of credibility among Chinese netizens for his honest and bold opinions against China's overly fascination to censor its netizens' internet activity.

In March, Mr Lee revealed on his Twitter account that he observed his Weibo posts getting censored and deleted quite a lot.

In the same month, the Chinese Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo suspended his account for three days after commenting against state-run search engine Jike.

Chinese netizens are curious over Facebook and Twitter.

"I really want to understand the outside world. I really want to hear different voices," one follower commented on Mr. Lee's April Fool's prank.

Mr Lee has a million followers on Twitter, 30 million on Sina Weibo and 24 million on Tencent Weibo.

Both Facebook and Twitter were censored from China in 2009. But it gave Chinese computer programmers enough inspiration to create the country's own social media site, Weibo.