by Neil Connor
The TelegraphYesterday, 18:21
The mysterious disappearance of a group ofHong Kong publishers who specialise in books that are critical of Chinese leaders has taken another turn after the wife of one of the men dropped her request for police help after her husband apparently wrote to say he was fine.
It also emerged on Tuesday that one of the missing publishers is British, according to the British Embassy.
Britain urgently requested Hong Kong and Chinese assistance in finding out where the British citizen was, it said in a statement.
Lee Bo became the fifth man working for the Mighty Current publishing house to have gone missing, it emerged last week, after four of his colleagues disappeared in October.
Lee’s wife, Choi Ka-ping, had contacted police fearing that her husband had been held when he visited a warehouse used by the company in Hong Kong.
But Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper said on Monday said that she had withdrawn her request for help in the search, as he had been in touch.
Taiwan's Central News Agency published a copy of Lee's handwritten faxed letter, saying it was addressed to an employee at the publishing company's Causeway Bay Bookstore.
“Because I have some urgent matters to deal, which cannot be revealed to the public, I have made my own way back to the mainland in order to cooperate with the investigation by interested parties”.
He also said that it might “take a bit of time" but that his “situation is very well.”
Opponents of the Chinese government, including executives who have been ensnared in Beijing’s wide-ranging crackdown on corruption, often disappear before details emerge of them being held by authorities.
Mr Lee’s fax is certain to raise eyebrows, given that police in Hong Kong had previously said there is no record of him crossing the border and his wife said he did not have his travel documents with him.
But despite Mr Lee’s wife’s request for the search for her husband to be called off, Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, said the investigation would continue.
“I hope anyone, especially Mr Lee Bo, can contact the police and provide information,” he said, according to the South China Morning Post.
Gui Minhai, a Swedish national and co-owner of the Mighty Current failed to return from a holiday in Thailand in October, while three other associates disappeared when they were visiting southern China, reports said.
Willy Lam, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong said the book was to be called either the “Six women of Xi Jinping” or “The lovers of Xi Jinping”.
It covered a period of his life when he held official posts in the south-eastern province of Fujian from 1985 until 2002 – and included revelations about the Chinese leader after he married his current wife Peng Liyuan in 1987.
“This is a highly toxic situation,” Prof Lam, author of Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping, told The Telegraph.
“Beijing made an instruction to silence, suppress or eradicate the four or five publishers in Hong Kong,” he said, adding that Chinese authorities wanted the publishers “put out of business”.
Additional reporting by Ailin Tang
http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/569980/s/4ca56cfc/sc/13/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cworldnews0Casia0Chongkong0C120A81920A0CRiddle0Eover0Emissing0EHong0EKong0Epublisher0Edeepens0Eafter0Ehe0Ewrites0Eto0Esay0Ehe0Eis0Efine0Bhtml/story01.htm
