It was a little surprising to see, but there was an article in the South China Morning Post today that said Chairman Xi gave a speech at a cyber security conference, and in it he said critics should get some slack from censors as long as the critique was "well intended". It falls at a time Xi and the Central Government were getting comments from a lot of people hurt by trade policies on both the US and Chinese side. Xi had previously said not to lay all the trade dispute problems on the US and not to mention President Trump in their criticisms.
As good as that might sound, turning China's huge censorship engine is not as easy as just talking about it. It is like a giant oil tanker that slugs along just fine until it gets near port. It needs a lot of steering help in tight quarters. It will be days before any loosening actually occurs, and weeks before there is much comment about those occurrences. Only the Chinese may notice the difference in discussions.
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