Dissident journalist Lu Keng dies in San Francisco

A graduate of Chengchi University with a journalism degree, Lu was China’s first broadcasting reporter in 1940. His political dissidence, however, made him do time for altogether 22 years. While working for the Central Daily News, Lu antagonized the Kuomintang government by publishing a story exposing the corruption of H. H. Kung and T. V. Soong in 1949. Kung was a brother-in-law of Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Soong was her brother.

It was Yu Yu-jen and Gen. Yen Hsi-shan who pleaded for mercy for the journalist, whose life was spared. But he was put into prison.

Yu was the president of the Control Yuan for life. When Yen was appointed premier in 1957, Lu was named his spokesman. With Yen’s downfall, the journalist was imprisoned again. Finally released in 1978, Lu went to Hong Kong to found a weekly magazine. He published an interview with Hu Yaobang, general-secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. He was arrested and put in jail after Hu’s fall from grace.

Because of his coverage of Jiang Nan, a former Taiwan double agent assassinated for his publication of the “Biography of Chiang Ching-kuo,” Lu came to know the widow Tsui Yung-chih in 1979. They married in San Francisco a couple of years later.

She said Lu suffered Alzheimer’s disease for years.

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