Exclusive | ‘We must carry on’: Chinese government critic and liberal icon Xu Zhangrun vows to keep saying ‘what needs to be said’
- Friends say formerly low-profile law professor is healthy, calm and positive despite an investigation prompted by his criticism of official policy
- Affairs of the state concern everyone, and intellectuals in particular must be able to speak their minds, academic quoted as saying
A Chinese law professor who has become an icon of China’s liberal intellectuals remains in high spirits despite facing an internal investigation and being barred from leaving the country, friends close to him have said.
Xu Zhangrun, a normally low-profile academic at Tsinghua University, attracted global attention last year after he published several essays on social media, criticising Chinese authorities’ policies and controversial changes to the constitution to remove a two-term limit for the president.
The university suspended him from duty last month and put him under an internal investigation.
Sources familiar with the situation told the South China Morning Post that Xu was also barred from leaving the country. Earlier this month, border control officers at Beijing Capital International Airport stopped him from taking a flight to Japan and told him he could not leave the country. The officers did not elaborate, but Tsinghua had approved the trip and paid for the flights, sources said.
Nevertheless, friends said Xu was in high spirits and vowed to continue to write.