Chinese dissident writer Liao Yiwu accused China's political elite of accumulating "dirty wealth" on Thursday, saying it had turned his country into "one of the biggest landfills in the world."

"There is wealth in China that only belongs to the powerful political class, that is the truth," Liao told a news conference at the International Book Fair of Guadalajara in western Mexico.

"It is a dirty wealth, that is why I think that China has become one of the biggest landfills in the world," said the author, also known as Lao Wei.

Liao gave the example of the sale of new apartments in a building in his native Sichuan province.

"An ordinary and normal person would have to have worked 100 years to be able to buy just the bathroom of one of these apartments," he said.

Liao, who was escorted by municipal security guards, said the Chinese government had asked the fair's organizers to withdraw his invitation,

The author spent four years in jail after writing the poem "Massacre" about the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. He moved to Germany after successfully defying a travel ban by walking to Vietnam.

Liao is also the author of "The Corpse Walker," which records the lives of working-class Chinese, including a grave robber and a delusional peasant who believes he is an emperor. His works are banned in China.