Word: lai
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...Manh represents a new generation of leadership for Vietnam: his career was forged not in the jungles of war but in communist training schools. His parents, Manh says, were named Nong Van Lai and Hoang Thi Nhi, ethnic Tay farmers in the remote northern province of Bac Can, who both died when he was young. The orphaned Manh soon found a new family in the Communist Party, which he joined at 22. The war between the north and the U.S.-backed south was in full swing, but Manh was sent to school rather than to battle, studying Russian in Hanoi...
...Beijing's Book Street, Bibles compete openly for space with self-help manuals and guides to getting into American M.B.A. programs. Selling the holy book is perfectly legal in China, certainly more legitimate than the peddling of skin magazines. (Look under the stack of computer journals.) So when Lai Kwong-keung, a 38-year-old Hong Kong trader, was indicted last month in Fujian province for bringing 33,000 Bibles into China, his mainland-born wife was puzzled. "How can you arrest someone," she asks, "for bringing in books that are available all over China...
...fact, Lai's books weren't the kind of Bibles the People's Republic condones. His New Testament Recovery version, unlike the text officially sanctioned in China, contains footnotes that try to explain particularly tricky parts of the scriptures. By using Lai's edition, underground evangelical worshippers can further their understanding of Christianity without the aid of preachers. That might sound innocuous enough, but not in the Chinese context. If you want to study the Bible in China, you are supposed to do so through either the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement or the Catholic Patriotic Association, which follow state...
...Lai's arrest highlights China's rough crackdown on religion. While previous Bible couriers have been deported for their secret work, Lai could face the death penalty for smuggling "cult publications" and will be up for trial as early as this week. In a worrisome precedent set last month, leaders of a Protestant denomination similar to Lai's were sentenced to death for holding underground meetings. Last fall, more than a dozen secret churches in eastern China were razed, leaving piles of rubble and crucifixes scattered throughout Fujian and Jiangsu provinces...
...Lai's plight has become an international concern. He is a Hong Kong resident, not a mainland Chinese citizen, and Hong Kongers still enjoy religious freedom even though the territory reverted to Chinese rule in 1997. Last week U.S. President George W. Bush expressed concern about Lai's case, which has chilled relations that had turned almost chummy after the Sept. 11 attacks. Beijing responded by telling Washington to stop meddling in its judicial affairs. Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi claimed Lai's transgression wasn't just bringing in Bibles, but also passing them to a fast-growing evangelical Christian...