Ladány was born in Budapest in 1914. He initially wanted to become a violinist and trained as such, but in 1936 he entered the Jesuit order. He also went to China that year, living first in Peking and then Shanghai. After the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 László Ladány and other Jesuits were forced to flee China, and he settled in Hong Kong. He began publishing China News Analysis in 1953 from the University of Hong Kong, and became well known by China watchers and journalists around the world. Ladány based his assessments and conclusions mainly on readings of official Chinese documents, and was consistently critical of Communist Party rule, earning him the ire of Communist Party supporters abroad. Ladány, who was variously called a "fanatical anti-Communist" by critics and as "the most exact and consistently correct observer" of mainland Chinese politics by admirers, possessed an uncanny ability to draw meaning out of often cryptic official Chinese documents. Jürgen Domes described him as having attained "unprecedented prestige as a China scholar, the doyen of the international community of observers of contemporary Chinese politics". Ladány served as the sole editor of China News Analysis from its founding until 1982, when he left the journal to pursue a career as an author. The sinologistSimon Leys gleaned much information from "the superb China News Analysis,... published weekly in Hong Kong by the Jesuit scholar Father Laszlo Ladany" while compiling reports that would become the basis of his 1971 bookLes Habits neufs du président Mao. In 1975 that book was awarded the Prix Jean Walter, prix d’histoire et de sociologie by the Académie française and in 1978 it was published in English as The Chairman's New Clothes.
Philosophy
In the final edition of China News Analysis for which Ladány served as editor, he compiled a "ten commandments" describing his philosophy on the study and assessment of contemporary Chinese politics:
Famine mortality estimate
In the August 10, 1962, issue of China News Analysis, Ladány accurately noted the existence of the massive famine resulting from Mao's Great Leap Forward and offered a "realistic estimate" of 50 million deaths. This was based on letters sent from the Chinese mainland and on refugee reports. Many years later Frank Dikötter was to estimate in his book Mao's Great Famine a death toll of "at least" 45 million, a close confirmation of Ladány's figure.
The Law and Legality in China: the testament of a China-watcher, edited by Jürgen Domes and Marie-Luise Näth. Honolulu: University of Hawai Press, 1992, and London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers Ltd., 1992.
