Lie was born in Balaraja village,
Tangerang Regency,
Banten residency,
Dutch East Indies on February 7, 1893. Little is known about his early life. In the 1910s and 1920s he was a journalist for the
Sin Po newspaper, as well as for lesser-known
Malay language papers such as , , and . The first cohort of PKI recruits there were apparently all printing press employees, notably of the
Dutch language paper , and Lie was among them. He got in trouble with the law in
Serang, in September 1925 for trying to visit a colleague in prison and refusing to back down when permission was denied. And in October 1925 the PKI's office opened in a building he owned in the Pasar Serang. In late 1927 he was exiled to the
Boven-Digoel concentration camp in what is now
Papua. In it, he noted that the camp authorities had reduced the prisoners' stipend by one quarter, and that by the following year they would no longer receive any at all. He said that he had operated a coffee shop in the camp to support himself for some time, but that it was no longer viable and he asked for support from ''''. He was released from Boven-Digoel after a decree from the
Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies on January 19, 1932. He returned to Semarang and apparently resumed his work as a bookseller. On December 22, 1959, he was declared a
Pioneer of Independence ( by the Indonesian government. He died on December 27, 1961. He was initially buried in a public cemetery in Semarang, but in 1986 his body was reburied in the
Giri Tunggal Heroes' Cemetery. His name is apparently one of the only two Chinese names found on graves there. == References ==