Xu Zhangrun

In February 2020, Xu published an essay Viral Alarm: When Fury Overcomes Fear condemning the Chinese Government’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Xu condemns how the government banned the reporting of factual information during the outbreak and connects this problem to a larger freedom of speech issue in China. After the publication of this essay, Xu’s friends were unable to get in touch with him. His account has been suspended on WeChat and his named scrubbed from Weibo. It is believed he is under house arrest.

In April 2019, friends reported that the authorities had prohibited Xu from leaving the country. He was stopped from boarding a flight to Japan on a trip authorized and funded by Tsinghua University.

In July 2018, Xu published an essay, translated as “Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes”, where he rebukes the recent policy shifts of Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping, including the abolition of term limits and the restoration of a cult of personality, which is notable for being a rare expression of public dissent. The essay has been translated into English by Geremie Barmé. That essay received some commentary from Western scholars. Xu had been suspended and put under investigation. The article “Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes” proposed to restore the Chinese Chairman’s tenure system, namely, from the life tenure system to the fixed-term system. The article has been leading Chinese people to discuss it. Some support it, while some are worried about the life safety of the professor Xu. The article was released at a very sensitive time during various risks happening in China, including America and China being in a trading war and the fierce inner-conflicts of the seniors of China’s Communist Party. Xu Zhangrun emphasized at the beginning of the article that the public, included the bureaucracy officers, are worried about the personal life safety problem and the national development direction. He pointed out the reason why people got those horrors were because of the ruling class breaking four basic principles which included the basic public security, the respect of the private property, the tolerance of the populace freedom life and the tenure system of the governing policy.

Xu Zhangrun (Chinese: 许章润 ; pinyin: Xǔ Zhāngrùn ; born October 1962) is a Chinese jurist. He is a professor of Jurisprudence and Constitutional Law at Tsinghua University, and a research fellow with the Unirule Institute of Economics.