许章润 / Xu Zhangrun is a legal scholar, former Tsinghua University law professor, constitutional thinker, and public intellectual whose scholarship and public essays form an important record of debates over law, republican government, term limits, academic freedom, and political responsibility in contemporary China.
Selected works and primary-source record
- 《我们当下的恐惧与期待》 / “Imminent Fears, Immediate Hopes” (2018) — a major public essay criticizing the erosion of political restraints and calling for restoration of presidential term limits, among other reforms.
- 《愤怒的人民已不再恐惧》 / “When Fury Overcomes Fear” (2020) — written during the COVID-19 crisis and focused on information control, political responsibility, and public fear.
- “China’s Lone Boat on the Ocean of World Civilization” (2020) — continued his critique of political centralization and institutional isolation.
- China Heritage Xu Zhangrun Archive — preserves translations, letters, essays, poetry, and later work, including material from 2024 and 2025.
- 2025 human-rights award acceptance writing — China Heritage preserves his May 2025 acceptance text and additional 2025 writing, providing evidence that he continued to write after losing his Tsinghua position.
Press and institutional record
- PEN America — records his 2019 teaching ban, July 2020 detention and release, and 2020 dismissal from Tsinghua.
- China Heritage — maintains the most extensive public English-language archive of his post-2018 writings and later status updates.
- FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg — awarded Xu a human-rights prize in 2025; the university reported that he remained unable to travel freely from Beijing to receive it in person.
Evidence caveats
- VERIFIED: legal-scholar identity, former Tsinghua affiliation, 2018–2020 public essays, 2019 teaching ban, July 2020 detention/release, and dismissal from Tsinghua.
- VERIFIED/STRONG: continued writing into 2024–2025 via the China Heritage archive.
- UNRESOLVED: exact current restrictions and living conditions beyond the most recent sourced reports; no inference is made from silence or older restrictions.
- English translations of Xu’s essays are treated as translations of primary writings, not as independent corroboration of the claims or judgments inside those essays.
Sources
- PEN America — Xu Zhangrun
- China Heritage — Xu Zhangrun Archive
- FAU — Professor Xu Zhangrun receives Human Rights Award
Related: Person profile: 许章润 / Xu Zhangrun