Korean War correspondent Wei Wei passes away

Chinese Business View
August 26, 2008

Renowned war correspondent Wei Wei (魏巍) passed away at the age of 88. His obituary made today’s newspapers, including Chinese Business View, two days after his death on August 24.

Wei was best known for Who is the most lovable, news story about the People’s Volunteer Army in the Korean War. Wei praised the army’s soldiers as the “most lovable,” an honorific for the PLA that is still in use today.

After the article was published in the People’s Daily on April 11, 1951, Mao Zedong issued an order that it be read by the entire PLA, and it has been included in junior high textbooks since the 1960s.

Wei also authored poetry and fiction, and his novel The East won the Mao Dun prize in 1983.

He last appeared in the media earlier this year as one of the authors of a criticism of Feng Xiaogang’s war movie Assembly. Wei and other “old cadres” suggested that Feng’s movie could potentially undermine the morale of the PLA.

Also in the Chinese Business View:

• Five women from Sichuan Province got married in Tongchuan, Shaanxi Province, between April and June, but on 27 June, they all left their husbands. They’ve now been arrested for fraud: running off with the money they accepted at the wedding. Two of the five have been found to be HIV positive, one of whom is pregnant. It is not clear yet if their husbands are also infected.
• The 11th Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislative body, is reviewing a draft revision of the current Crime Law.

  The new Crime Law is expected to toughen the penalty for government officials who possess a large amount of unexplainable assets. According to the draft, relatives of government officials and retired government officials who are involved in corruption will also face harsher punishment. The new Crime Law also addresses privacy concerns: trading in personal information will be made illegal, to be punishable by fine or imprisonment.