The acknowledge a grant by the National Science Foundation of China, so I assume they convinced someone there that knowing more about the effects of censorship would be useful for the government as well.
I'm not sure what their choice of communication method has to do with anything.
Turns out he got 2.8 million yuan from 2015-01 to 2019-12 for research on behavioral economics, which I guess is broad enough that he could have done the research without telling anyone at the NSFC about it. I guess we'll be able to tell based on whether he gets a new grant approved from 2020 onwards.
[1] can't link, but you can find it with 批准号 71425006 and 批准年度 2014 at https://isisn.nsfc.gov.cn/egrantindex/funcindex/prjsearch-li...