Word: lei
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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This week the Chinese skeleton is rattling for all it is worth. A Taipei publisher named Lei Chen made the mistake last summer of starting an opposition party--something that is not done in America's rather tarnished bastion of democracy in the Far East. On September 4, Chang's men arrested Lei on charges of sedition, much to the dismay of Nationalist intellectuals at home and overseas. Now the trial, originally scheduled for October 15, is being pushed through this week, and no one has any serious doubts as to its outcome...
...political critic, the daily Rung Lun Pao's chief editorial writer Ni Shi-tan, had been summarily sentenced to seven years in prison for "sedition" for criticizing the Nationalist government. His case got almost no attention either inside or outside Formosa. But last week the case of Publisher Lei Chen (TIME, Sept. 19) was proving about as easy to hush up as a typhoon...
...Shih, China's most eminent scholar and a former Chinese Nationalist Ambassador to the U.S., bustled between Washington and New York, demanding an open civil trial for Lei Chen. Dr. Hu is a close friend of Chiang Kaishek, but at the same time he is also a leading exponent of Formosa's need for a responsible opposition. Other overseas Chinese took up the cudgels. In Hong Kong the British-owned China Mail said angrily that Lei's arrest proved that "free speech is as dangerous in Formosa as it was shown to be during the Hundred Flowers...
Even on Formosa the government's claim that Lei had employed two Communist agents on his Free China Fortnightly was not believed. "If Lei had really been suspected of Communist affiliations," said a Nationalist, "he would have been arrested long ago." Lei's political colleagues refused to scare; they announced they would go ahead and establish their China Democratic Party without...
...week's end Chinese Nationalists were unhappily trying to figure a way out. Admitted one official: "The government would gladly release Lei if it had any way of saving face...