Xi Jinping, who is also the head of the CCP and the military, is currently in his second term.
The best university in China has sacked a law professor, who is a staunch critic of the ruling Chinese Communist Party leadership, including the constitutional amendment making President Xi Jinping permanent by removing the two-term limit.
Xu Zhangrun, a candid professor of Chinese law at Tsinghua University, was officially informed of his expulsion on Saturday, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Sunday.
Tsinghua University, whose alumni include President Xi, has been ranked as the top university in China by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
The notification, dated Wednesday, was sent to Xu by mail, the report said, citing a friend who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Tsinghua University, where Xu, 57, has worked for 20 years, said he made the decision after a meeting on July 10.
Xu, a prominent jurist, is one of the few academics to have publicly challenged the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in recent years in a number of essays published online in China and abroad.
“We have verified that Xu Zhangrun has published numerous essays since July 2018 and that it is a serious violation of” 10 standards of professional conduct for teachers of higher education institutes in the new era “”, indicates notification.
The guidelines, issued by the Ministry of Education in 2018, indicated that teachers would be fired or punished if they said or did something that undermines the CCP’s authority or violates party directives and policies.
Earlier this month, Xu was taken away by Chengdu police from his Beijing home. Later, his wife was informed that he had been arrested for soliciting prostitutes on the way to the capital of Sichuan Province, a complaint dismissed by Xu’s friends as an attempt to discredit him.
Xu was released last Sunday and returned home after six days in detention.
In July 2108, Xu released his first criticism of the CCP leadership, which included one of the few public statements opposing the removal of the presidential term limits, which allow Xi Jinping to remain in office after 2023.
Xi, 67, who is also the head of the CCP and the military, is currently in his second term.
All of Xi’s predecessors, with the exception of party founder Mao Zedong, respected the two to five-year term standard to prevent the perpetuation of the domination of a single leader of the CCP and the country.
The five-year standard was abolished in 2018 by the National People’s Congress (NPC), the Chinese parliament, paving the way for a possible life term for Xi at the helm.
Xu was suspended from teaching by Tsinghua in 2019, but continued to write essays criticizing the party leadership.
In February and May, Xu published two long articles openly criticizing the CCP leadership for mismanaging the coronavirus.
Using satire and a mix of modern and classic Chinese, Xu lamented how isolated the country was and how the public was gagged by fear and surveillance of big data, according to the Post report.
He also published a number of shorter essays criticizing the Chinese government in recent months.
The university told Xu that if he wanted to appeal the dismissal, he would have to go to the Ministry of Education and the Beijing Education Commission.
