Chinese authorities have arrested a man who planned to protest on the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen square crackdown on a charge of "inciting state subversion," his wife and an advocacy group said on Wednesday.

Police in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou detained Gu Yimin on June 1, and later sent a formal statement of arrest, his wife Xu Yan and US-based advocacy group Human Rights in China said.

"He just posted some pictures of June 4 online, and applied to the local government to hold a protest on June 4, he didn't do anything else," she said, referring to the anniversary of the crackdown.

"If these two actions could constitute 'inciting subversion of state power,' then this regime must be really fragile and easy to subvert," Human Rights in China quoted Xu as saying in a press release.

Charges of incitement to state subversion have previously been used to imprison political dissidents.

Gu's lawyer Liu Weiguo said that local police did not allow him to meet with his client when he attempted to visit him at a detention centre last week.

Discussion of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, when army troops were sent to crush pro-democracy protests, leading to hundreds of deaths, remain tightly controlled by China's ruling Communist party, which seeks to maintain its grip on power.