Beijing authorities yesterday detained a law professor at Tsinghua University who published essays criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) over the COVID-19 pandemic and accusing him of ruling “tyrannically,” his friends said.
Xu Zhangrun (許章潤), a rare outspoken critic of the government in China’s heavily censored academia, was taken from his home in suburban Beijing by more than 20 people, one of his friends said on condition of anonymity.
Xu published an essay in February blaming the culture of deception and censorship fostered by Xi for the spread of the novel coronavirus in China.
China’s “leader system is itself destroying the structure of governance,” Xu wrote in the essay that appeared on overseas Web sites, adding that the chaos in the virus epicenter of Hubei Province reflected systemic problems in the Chinese state.
China is “led by one man only, but this man is in the dark and rules tyrannically, with no method for governance, though he is skilled at playing with power, causing the entire country to suffer,” Xu wrote.
He also predicted that an ongoing economic slowdown in China would cause “the decline of national confidence,” along with “political and academic indignation and social atrophy.”
Xu had previously spoken out against the 2018 abolition of presidential term limits in an essay circulated online.
A friend said that a man claiming to be police had called Xu’s wife — who had been living separately at a university residence — to say Xu was arrested for allegedly soliciting prostitution in the southwestern city of Chengdu.
Xu visited Chengdu last winter with a number of liberal Chinese academics, although it is unclear if the arrest was connected to the trip, the friend said, calling the allegation “ridiculous and shameless.”
He was placed under house arrest last week, the friend said.
After Tsinghua reportedly barred Xu from teaching and conducting research last year, hundreds of Tsinghua alumni — and academics from around the world — signed an online petition calling for him to be reinstated.
Tsinghua and public security authorities in Beijing did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Freedom of expression in China has always been tightly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, but that grip has become suffocating under Xi.
A Chinese court last year sentenced “cyberdissident” Huang Qi (黃琦), whose Web site reported on sensitive topics, including human rights, to 12 years in prison for “leaking state secrets.”
Space for independent discussion has shrunk further this year as Xi’s government has sought to deflect blame for the coronavirus.
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