Xu Zhangrun, Chinese academic and opponent of Xi Jinping, arrested in Beijing

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This Monday, July 6, Xu Zhangrun was arrested at his home in Beijing. For two years, this law professor was one of the last opponents of the Chinese regime to speak publicly in open letters aimed specifically at the Chinese president.

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With our correspondent in Beijing, Zhifan Liu

Xu Zhangrun was somewhat the last of the Mohicans, the last dissonant voice in an increasingly authoritarian Chinese regime. But this morning, the intellectual was arrested at his home, in a police operation which mobilized no less than 20 officers. An important device, proportional to the stature of Xu.

For two years, he has been the most critical of Chinese opponents. In the midst of a coronavirus epidemic in February, he denounced the opacity of the Chinese authorities in the management of the health crisis, the day after the death of Li Wenliang, doctor-whistleblower who had moved the Chinese population . In the process, he was placed under house arrest in the suburbs of Beijing.

Already suspended from his university

In the summer of 2018, while he was a professor of law at the prestigious Tshinghua University, the academic published an open letter pointing to the authoritarian drift of the Chinese government. A few months earlier, Xi Jinping had just removed the limit of two presidential terms, effectively offering himself a presidency for life. Consequently, he was suspended by his faculty and was the subject of an internal investigation.

This arrest comes at a time when the spaces for expression have shrunk since the arrival of Xi Jinping in power in 2012. The threat of repression by any critical voice and the crushing of the intellectual milieu also hangs over Hong Kong , after the vote on a new national security law on June 30.

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• China
• Xi Jinping