Computer scientists at the Delft University of Technology in Holland and the Shanghai Jiaotong University studied 46 million messages posted on Twitter and the enormously popular Sina Weibo (a similar but non related Chinese service pronounced way-bore).

Eighty per cent of the Twitter users were US-based, while 95 per cent of the Sina Weibo users were Chinese.

Seventy-nine per cent of the messages posted on Sina Weibo were expressing positive sentiments, compared to 71 per cent on Twitter.

When people on Sina Weibo were discussing people or locations, Sina Weibo users became even more positive – while Twitter users were more negative.

The report said: “Whereas 16 per cent of tweets referred to ‘organisations’, only 3 per cent do on Sina Weibo. Part of this may reflect the preference of Chinese users for avoiding mentioning large groups such as political parties.”

Westerners tend to post messages about a narrower range of topics. The study concluded: “The topics and concepts users discuss on Sina Weibo differ from Twitter (user interests are broader on Sina Weibo). This may reflect the fact that Chinese social media behaviour is more collectivistic in culture, and actual content of Chinese messages seems more important.”

Chinese social media users tend to use Sina Weibo more on a weekend, reflecting the lack of Chinese corporate use of the media.

Sina Weibo users publish on average 19 per cent more messages per day on the weekend than during the week, while Twitter users average 11 per cent less on the weekend.

Western users of social media tend to retweet information faster than Chinese users and share more links while using hashtags.

The professors behind the study think this partly reflect the “greater eagerness (and individualism) of Twitter users to see their post appear in public discussion”.

In March earlier this year, there was the fear that hundreds of millions of Chinese faced being silenced on the country's social networks, including Sina's Weibo, after the government brought in new rules to track people across the web.

Anyone wishing to post on one of China's networks must now register with their real names, allowing the government to easily find them if they write anything contentious.

Not only has Sina Weibo largely displaced television and newspapers as the country's most important source of information, but it has reconfigured the relationship between the Communist party and its citizens.

The largely unfettered stream of news, gossip, entertainment, scandal and opinion on the website, all posted in real time, has confounded the Chinese government's attempts to cover up or play down issues, and has forced officials to pay more attention to the public.