Li Ao

His Novel Martyrs' Shrine: The Story of the Reform Movement of 1898 in China (北京法源寺), is about the beginning and the failure of the Hundred Days' Reform.

Li Ao (, also spelled Lee Ao; 25 April 1935 – 18 March 2018) was a Chinese-Taiwanese writer, essayist, social commentator, historian and independent politician.

Li's critics have called him an intellectual narcissist.

He was a vocal critic of both the main political parties in Taiwan today, the Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party.

Li's father was charged with treason.

96 of Li's books were temporarily banned in Taiwan.

Li was also imprisoned for a dispute with a former employer.

Li was born in Harbin, Manchukuo to Li Dingyi (李鼎彝), a professor of Chinese, and Zhang Kuichen (張桂貞).

His family had ancestry in Wei County (modern-day Weifang), Shandong Province, and Fuyu County, Jilin Province.

When Li was two years old, the family moved to Beijing, where Li's father worked in the government's opium suppression bureau.

There, Li's father was accused of being a traitor to the Kuomintang by his superiors.

Li then began feeling enmity towards the party.

The entire Li family, except for two children, moved to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

Li received his bachelor's degree from National Taiwan University's Department of History in 1959.

Li participated in the democratic movement in Taiwan between the 1960s and 1980s.

In the 1960s, he was the editor-in-chief of Wenxing (文星), a magazine that promoted democracy and personal freedom.

Throughout the 1970s, Li received much international attention for his imprisonment.

He was jailed by the Kuomintang government from 1971 to 1976, for helping a pro-Taiwan independence legal scholar, Peng Ming-min, escape to Japan in 1970; even though Li himself had a long history of being an advocate of reunification.

He was highlighted by Amnesty International as one of the three most important political prisoners in Taiwan in 1974.

After his release, Li continued to publish articles in magazines and newspapers, criticizing the Kuomintang government.

In the 1980s he also sponsored numerous anti-Kuomintang magazines.

His Novel Mountaintop Love (上山．上山．愛), about a mother and a daughter who fall in love with the same man, though several years apart, established Li's status as a prominent novelist.

Li was also imprisoned from 1981 to 1982 over a dispute with a former employer.

Ninety-six of his books were banned in Taiwan until 1991.

Li participated in the presidential election in 2000 as a candidate for the New Party.

Li usually played the role of a political gadfly, and his campaign was largely symbolic.

He took the election as an opportunity to "educate" the people of Taiwan.

Both Li and his party publicly encouraged people to vote for James Soong.

During the presidential debates, Li even stated that he was not planning to vote for himself and that people should vote for Soong.

Since the 2000 presidential election, Li had bitterly spoken out against pro-independence Nobel laureate Yuan T. Lee, who publicly supported Chen Shui-bian.

He also accused former President Lee Teng-hui of corruption.

Li also published his autobiography in 2001, revealing more than ten of his romantic affairs.

However, the bulk of his work is non-fiction and consists mainly of essays and historical commentaries.

In October 2004, Li ran in the December 11 legislative election as a non-partisan candidate of the South Taipei constituency, and was subsequently elected to be the last winning place.

He took office as an independent legislator on 1 February 2005.

In February 2005, Li held a press conference, accusing the PFP leader, James Soong of having changed his opposition towards military weapons purchase from the United States under the influence of people of pro-American inclination, people with CIA backgrounds and arms traders who would receive kick-backs.

Li threatened Soong that he would reveal the names of the people with CIA backgrounds, who were influencing Soong, to the general public unless Soong reverted to his previous opposition position.

PFP legislators dismissed the accusation and responded that Li Ao should reveal his evidence to support his story.

Later that year, in June, Li claimed to the Taiwanese press that he had exclusive information from the CIA concerning the 3-19 shooting incident.

He alleged that the real motive of the killer was to assassinate the Vice-President Annette Lu in order to garner sympathy votes for Chen Shui-bian, and that the killer had been condoned by the governing party for ulterior political reasons.