Word: lei
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
Fortnight ago Lei formally established the China Democratic Party, put out a 1,500-word platform largely devoted to explaining that the new party agreed with most of the Kuomintang's goals. But what caught the suspicious eye of Kuomintang watchdogs was the fact that most of the members of the China Democratic Party's executive committee were native-born Formosans. To the mainland Chinese who run the Kuomintang, it seemed clear that Lei & Co. planned to capitalize on discontent among native Formosans, who make up 80% of the island's 10 million population...
...Deaf Ear. One morning last week, security police bustled into Lei's suburban Taipei home and hauled the publisher off to face a military court on charges of sedition. Though the Nationalist government insisted that Lei had not been arrested for trying to organize an opposition, the cops (who are bossed by Chiang Kai-shek's son, Moscow-educated Lieut. General Chiang Ching-kuo) were careful to take with them membership lists of the China Democratic Party. Lei's crime, the authorities declared, had been to publish in his magazine articles "defaming the chief of state, creating...
Proud, intemperate Lei Chen, who had hitherto been a relatively obscure figure, found himself famous overnight throughout Formosa and in Chinese colonies abroad. Respected Scholar Hu Shih came to Lei's defense, called him "a patriotic man and certainly an anti-Communist." From the publisher of San Francisco's Chinese World, President Chiang Kai-shek received a cable deploring Lei's arrest as "one of the great mistakes of your career." And even within Chiang's government there were those who doubted the wis dom of the move. For by this blunder, the Nationalists stood...