Xu Zhangrun, 57, was taken into custody yesterday and removed from his post at the prestigious Tsinghua University after he wrote an article condemning the president’s policies and his removal of the term limit, which allows him to rule for life.

Despite being put under house arrest a year ago he has continued to express strong disapproval of the government.

He wrote: “Friends, by the national system, the party-state is the biggest landlord on earth.

“People have lived here generation after generation, but they are deprived of the right to own land today. With a colossal hand monopolising the land, all Chinese people are vagabonds.

“A political regime that monopolises thoughts absolutely does not tolerate any free-growing art and thoughts independent of its ‘planning’, but will eradicate them to manifest the fascist aesthetics of forced uniformity.”

Professor Zhangrun came to fame in 2018 when he said that the removal of the presidential term limit had “essentially nullified more than 30 years of reform and opening up and slapped China back to the scary era of Mao”.

He warned in May that other countries’ trust in China was diminishing.

“Enough, this mouldy deity-creating movement and shallow leader-worshipping,” he wrote.

“Enough, this shameless act of singing and dancing as if all were alright. Enough, this bold lie and endless suffering. Enough, this bloodthirsty red dynasty, this insatiable party-state system. Enough, these seven years of ridiculous confusion, step-by-step retrograde actions.

“Enough, these 70 years of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and of the red tyranny.”