Hong Kong’s Chief Government involved over lacking bookseller

AFP reported that Lee was last seen at a Hong Kong book warehouse. The recent disappearances, however, point to worries that the Chinese authorities are tightening their grip on the former British colony as part of a general move across the Middle Kingdom to quash any dissent.

The FCO urged the Hong Kong government to “honour its commitment” to press freedom. It said it was “deeply concerned” about the case and has “urgently requested” help from authorities in Hong Kong and mainland China to find out the person’s location and condition. Mr Leung, however, said investigations would continue. Four associates involved in publishing or selling literature critical of Beijing have also gone missing in mysterious circumstances during the past few months.

All five men worked for publishing firm Mighty Current, which is rumoured to have been about to launch a book on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s former girlfriend.

The BBC said Lee “is thought to be in detention in mainland China”.

Softer methods were also used: Sources say there were at least two instances where publishers were offered payments of up to HK$1 million (S$184,000) by Chinese security agents to stop publishing certain material.

“The mainland is targeting our publishing industry and our journalists in a policy that could be described as white terror”, Ho said.

Hong Kong opposition lawmakers protested on Sunday outside Beijing’s representative office over Lee’s disappearance.

The disappearances have raised fears that Beijing is tightening its grip on Hong Kong, a semiautonomous territory that enjoys civil liberties such as freedom of the press that don’t exist on the mainland.

Mr Lee’s wife said on Saturday her husband told her during a phone call that he was “assisting in an investigation”.

Opposition leaders in Hong Kong say they believe he has been taken across the border to China against his will.

The note is genuine, she said, and she has retracted a police report she made.

“I can tell you I am really afraid”, she said.

Those details, plus an unconfirmed police report showing no record of Mr Lee ever having left Hong Kong, were enough to convince veteran lawmaker and human rights activist Albert Ho that the bookseller had been kidnapped.

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She said the case of the missing five is related to security issues and the work of the police and hence should be discussed at the security panel meeting.

However, since then there have been two significant developments.

On the night of his disappearance, Mr Lee had called his wife from a Shenzhen number, saying he was helping in an “investigation”. Books such as those sold at the shop in Causeway Bay are popular among mainland tourists who appear to care little that much of the “inside information” is dubiously sourced.

Bao Pu, a Hong Kong-based publisher whose company has also put out political books banned in the mainland, said Gui and Lee had been marketing thinly documented titles about Chinese leaders for about a decade, sometimes at a rate of one a week.

Inquiries made by RFA with Beijing’s Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong on Monday had met with no reply by the time of writing. Embracing the Chinese President with a state visit in 2015, Mr Cameron expressed concerns about Hong Kong with Mr Xi in private, only to be slammed down by the Chinese Foreign Ministry in public.