He never did. He was always saying Twitter should be like china's weibo which is hub for almost all online activity in china (twitter, instagram, facebook, amazon, etc.) I mean imagine the profits if you can control all social media and online shopping. It'd be like Windows or Google.

He thinks people are too stupid to realize weibo is so big as social media BECAUSE the government controls it to censor at will and eliminated competitors (for example the recent protests where the protesters were airdropping info got shut down by apple through pressure from chinese government).

Of course maybe he thought his government friends would help him out there too with subsidies and government contracts like with his other companies. (Like the people calling for twitter to be a "public utility.")