Beijing police detain writer Huang Zerong, or Tieliu, 81

A well-known 81-year-old writer was taken from his Beijing home and detained by police, his wife said yesterday, adding that he had written several articles critical of a senior politician recently.

She said the police also detained Huang's medical caregiver on the same charge on the same day. There was no explanation of why the caregiver was detained.

Police also took books, journals and a computer, Ren said.

Beijing police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Huang's wife said he recently wrote several articles criticising Liu Yunshan , a member of the powerful Politburo Standing Committee and the Communist Party's propaganda chief, for tightening controls over the news media.

Ren said the articles appeared on overseas websites.

The country's leadership has become less tolerant of criticism, with the authorities increasingly using coercion and detentions to suppress dissent.

Huang's detention probably makes him "China's oldest suspect for 'picking quarrels and provoking trouble'," Liu Xiaoyuan, a rights lawyer and friend of Huang, wrote in a tweet on Sunday night.

Huang was denounced as a "rightist" during Mao Zedong's crackdown on liberals after the Hundred Flowers Campaign in the late 1950s, in which the party chairman briefly tolerated criticism but then purged those who spoke up.

The journalist from Sichuan , then in his twenties, served 23 years in a re-education through labour camp.

The Communist Party cleared his name in 1980.