Surely there's got to be _some_ cognitive dissonance in having to evade your own country's censorship to spread your defense of it?

I'd feel differently if this were Chinese citizens of their own free will exercising their inalienable human rights and freedom of expression by making a case to the world, but no, it isn't.

>Chinese citizens of their own free will

I don't know if there are government sponsored campaigns, but the vast majority of these people are acting spontaneously, you can see people on Weibo sharing how to register western social media and what to do if suspended, there are Baidu Tiebas(similar to Google+) dedicated to these coordinated campaigns with millions of followers.

The reality is the vast majority of China support the CCP, and most of them do not hate the regime.

Usually it's a mixture.

Same thing happens in the West, except in the West it's usually NGOs instead of governments themselves.