Religion: Ghostly Counter-Revolution

To the long, shameful list of "crimes" against the state invented by totalitarian rulers to repress their subjects, Red China has added another: spirit-crime.

Two leaders of the mystic Taoist faith in Hunan Province have been condemned to death, according to the Peking press, for "preparing paper-made robes, swords, warships, banners, bows and arrows in a vicious attempt to equip an army of the other world and attack the Communist Party." In the Taoist view, objects can be translated to the spirit world if paper representations are burned. Thus the paper ornaments could indeed be stockpiled for a counterrevolution of spirits.

Clearly, the Marxist-materialist bosses of Hunan's "people's government" are afraid of ghosts—or of a restless undercurrent of anti-Communism that has resulted in a China-wide crackdown against dissenters of all kinds. At first, ran the Peking account, Taoists Li Kwei-ying (a woman) and Chiang Chang-en were given eight-year sentences. They received death sentences only after Hunan's "masses protested against too light punishment."