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Chinese authorities have detained an 81-year-old journalist with a failing memory who recently criticized heavy censorship that he said is doing great damage to Chinas media.

Tie Liu, a writer and journalist who spent decades in work camps as a young man, had thought he was too old to draw the attention of authorities. He had for decades offered unvarnished opinions of the Chinese state, and recently directed withering criticism at Liu Yunshan, the elite politician and propaganda czar. In August, Mr. Tie released an online article accusing Mr. Liu of further sullying Chinas already obedient state press and making the media lose its credibility in China.

But at 1 a.m. on Sunday, his phone rang. Soon after, one of Beijings highest-ranking police officials was in his house, presenting him with a summons paper that accused him of causing a disturbance.

In the midst of a broad effort led by Chinese President Xi Jinping to stifle critical expression on the Internet, in churches and in the courts, even an octogenarian one who had recently agreed with his wife he would lay down the verbal hatchet at the end of this year is a target in China today.

Not long after police arrived, he was escorted from the house with a suit jacket over his pyjamas to protect against the cold in the deep of night, his wife, Ren Hengfang, said. Less than 24 hours later, after also arresting his domestic helper and publishing assistant, the police were back, with papers from cybersecurity police confirming he had been formally detained. He is being held at the Beijing municipal detention house.

The notice may have set a kind of grim record for China.

He might be the oldest suspect in China on charges of creating a disturbance, said Liu Xiaoyuan, a Chinese human-rights lawyer, on Twitter.

It also marks a return into state hands, a grimly familiar place for Mr. Tie, whose real name is Huang Zerong although he is best known by his pen name.

In the mid-1950s, in one of Mao Zedongs uglier social engineering efforts, Chinese people were encouraged to vent their problems with the Communist Party. The so-called Hundred Flowers Campaign brought fourth an outpouring of criticism. Mr. Tie contributed an article about civil servants. It was published in my newspaper and nobody thought much about it, he said in a 2010 interview with Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

Then, Mao changed course, labelled the critics rightists and oversaw a massive purge. All of a sudden, I was sent to a work camp for 23 years, Mr. Tie told RNW.

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Chinese authorities detain elderly journalist over censorship criticism