Mystery of missing men in Hong Kong takes a twist

Mrs Lee has now said she is happy that a handwritten letter, purportedly from Mr Lee and published by Taiwan’s news agency Central News, is genuine.

Ben Kwong Man-bun, executive director of KGI Asia, told the South China Morning Post that this is due mainly to regulatory differences in the two markets.

China’s nationalist newspaper Global Times slammed the bookstore in an editorial Monday for “profiting on political rumors” and selling books with “trumped-up content”.

Lee Bo, 65, disappeared last week and was last seen in Hong Kong, where he is a resident. Last year, thousands of protesters occupied areas downtown to demand democratic elections, which infuriated leaders in Beijing. Speculation over Lee’s disappearance was “ideologically biased”, it said in a commentary on Tuesday.

“I and related government departments are very concerned”, Leung Chun-ying told reporters.

The Communist Party is hardly discreet about its loathing of what it calls Hong Kong’s “radicals”.

This means A-shares listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen on average are trading at a premium of 39.75 per cent when compared with their H-shares counterpart in Hong Kong. “And most of these books, or all these books, are strongly critical of the current communist regime”.

Mighty Current controls an umbrella of publishing companies, some hard to trace, that are responsible for anywhere from one-third to 60 per cent of the racy Chinese political books on sale at newsstands and in bookshops, Bao and Bei said, meaning that if it were eliminated, that would greatly reduce the number of such books. For more, we turn to NPR’s Frank Langfitt, who’s following the story from Shanghai.

The most recent disappearance, Lee Bo, happened just last week.

The quintet were running a risky trade in books banned on the mainland for their “explosive” content, chronicling the latest power struggles or gossip about the personal lives of Chinese leaders.

In what was supposed to help unite and invigorate Asian equity trading past year, the Shanghai-Honk Kong equity link appears to have fallen flat and requires some changes, according to traders overseas.

Four of his business associates, publisher Gui Minhai, general manager Lui Bo and colleagues Cheung Jiping and Lam Wing-kei have gone missing under similar circumstances since October, although some have called to let their families know they are alive and well, suggesting they are now in detention in China. But he said there was “no indication” of outside involvement in the case.

“It is very hard to do arbitrage between Shanghai and Hong Kong.

It is not uncommon in mainland China for company executives and dissidents to be detained for lengthy periods by the authorities, or vanish without anyone claiming responsibility. Is this all getting so much attention because it is Hong Kong? It accused the Hong Kong media of “maliciously” stirring up conflict. It’s a former British colony, of course. He is an editor with Sage Communications, which puts out salacious books, sometimes shakily sourced, that describe Communist Party scandals. The author of the note states that he went to China of his own volition and is “working with the concerned parties”. So Hong Kongers are anxious these disappearances may be a part of a crackdown to slowly strip away their freedoms.

The Hong Kong authorities later also confirmed that Lee did not have any record of having exited the island.

Has there been any word from the Chinese government on Lee’s case?

MONTAGNE: That does sound a little scary.

“Hong Kong citizens are entitled to feel safe walking in the streets of Hong Kong”.

MONTAGNE: And how are Hong Kong police investigating? Are they are in mainland China? They haven’t gotten any answers yet. Four other colleagues from the same bookstore disappeared from their residences in October. And then his wife also withdrew the missing persons complaint from the cops. 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.