The offer to become a Chinese spy was made over a lunch of Sichuan fish, spicy tofu and stir-fried green beans. It was September 2013 and the trade was to be a simple one – money in exchange for information.

I had been in China for 17 months at that point and, like most foreign correspondents, was frustrated by the Communist Party's vice-like grip on information in a political system that had changed little since the days of Mao Zedong.