Page "Homer Lea" Paragraph 10

After breaking with the Pao Huang Hui, Lea again turned his ambitions to China.

In 1908, he unsuccessfully sought to become a U. S. trade representative to China for the Roosevelt administration ; and in 1909, he unsuccessfully sought to become the U. S. Minister to China for the Taft administration.

In 1908, he also contrived a bold and audacious military venture in China called the “ Red Dragon Plan ” that called for organizing a revolutionary conspiracy to conquer the two southern Kwang provinces.

He conspired with a handful of American businessmen and Dr. Yung Wing, a prominent former Chinese diplomat and scholar living in America.

Through Yung Wing, he planned to solicit a united front of various southern Chinese factions and secret societies to organize an army that he would command for the revolution.

If successful, Yung Wing was slated to head a coalition government of revolutionary forces while Lea and his fellow conspirators hoped to receive wide-ranging economic concessions from the new government.