Critics fear the publisher, and the Hong Kong government, are working from a script written in Beijing and that the city’s freedoms are at risk
PHILA SIU, OLIVER CHOU AND TONY CHEUNG
UPDATED : Saturday, 26 March, 2016, 12:25am
Throughout the disappearance saga people visited Causeway Bay Books. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
Causeway Bay bookseller Lee Po is walking away from the “banned book” business that he has devoted himself to for a decade.
But as he made that declaration outside his North Point home on Friday – before jumping into a vehicle with cross-border plates back to the mainland accompanied by an unidentified man – he left behind a city still troubled by the damage his disappearance has done to confidence in the “one country, two systems” principle.
“I want to forget the past and start afresh. I am starting another page in my life,” he told a media pack.
But Hong Kong people do not appear ready to forget about what has happened to him and four of his associates.
The five booksellers’ strange disappearances have left many Hongkongers fearful that the 2047 deadline expiry date for Beijing’s 50-year promise to run the city under the “one country, two systems” formula will come earlier than they thought.
What was more frustrating, critics said, was that the Hong Kong government seemed to have been helpless and had no recourse but to be reactive to the agenda set by others.
“Lee Po deserves our pity because he is not truly free. Those words he said were for those up there [on the mainland], not for us,” said veteran China-watcher Ching Cheong, a former China correspondent for The Straits Times who was jailed on the mainland for three years on espionage charges he denied committing. “The ‘one country, two systems’ principle is under serious threat. Hong Kong people’s concerns are legitimate and it is not only about Lee’s personal safety,” Ching said.
Asked if he expected Lee to tell a different story when all his associates were freed, Ching replied: “That’s our expectation, but it’s up to him. It could remain a mystery forever.”
Since October last year, five associates of the Mighty Current publishing house and its Causeway Bay Books store started to go missing one by one under strange circumstances. Gui Minhai vanished from Pattaya, Thailand, in that month. Cheung Chi-ping, Lam Wing-kee and Lui Por disappeared while on the mainland. Then Lee disappeared from his Chai Wan warehouse in December.
Their disappearances led to speculation that they were kidnapped by mainland Chinese agents.
All have surfaced to say they returned to the mainland willingly.
Veteran China-watcher Johnny Lau Yui-siu, a friend of Lee, questioned why the Hong Kong government allowed Lee to leave the city on Friday when the Immigration Department suspected he had committed immigration offences by not leaving the city through proper channels last December.
He also accused the Hong Kong government of “acting totally according to the script put together by the mainland authorities” in the case of the five booksellers.
“Such a joint effort could bring about the early demise of the ‘one country, two systems’ principle,” he warned.
A man writing a message expressing well-wishes for the missing booksellers in Causeway Bay. Photo: Dickson Lee
He believed that the mainland authorities had targeted the five booksellers not because of the banned books business per se, but because of a few Mighty Current titles. Lau said he knew some unidentified mainlanders had bought the copyrights of at least three books the booksellers planned to publish in a bid to stop the works entering the market.
But the booksellers went ahead and published the books with new covers, Lau said, adding that this might have enraged the mysterious buyers.
Soon after Lee disappeared, he told Beijing-friendly media that he “smuggled” himself to the mainland even though he has a home return permit, with many drawing the conclusion he might have been under pressure to make that statement.
In an interview with a selected group of Hong Kong and mainland media on Thursday, Lee heaped praise on the mainland enforcement agencies, saying how “civilised” they were and how proud he was to be Chinese.
He also said he would never publish and sell books that contained “fabricated” contents. Freedom of publication and free speech did not mean people could “make things up”, he said. He urged those still in the business to stop doing so.
Lee’s call for people to quit the banned books business came from a person who joined the business about a decade ago. Lee wrote a book himself about corrupt party boss Chen Liangyu, according to veteran publisher Jin Zhong, chief editor of Open Magazine.
That book, published in 2007, was the first account on the subject and garnered a lot of interest. It became Lee’s first bucket of gold, generating a profit of HK$1 million.
Jin, along with other people in the publishing and bookselling business, have no plans to stop.He said he would continue to publish books of worthy content regardless of Lee’s call.
Jin was blunt when commenting on Lee’s situation.
“At least he has admitted his books are based on made-up stories. That is his money-making practice all of us as local publishers know well and loathe,” he said from New York.
“While we sympathise with his plight, he should be responsible for his own deeds, and that’s perhaps why he has no choice but to speak like a puppet.”
Paul Tang Tsz-keung, owner of People’s Book Cafe, said he would continue his business until “someone knocks on my door”.
“If the mainland authorities really want us to shut down our businesses, they would not have done it through Lee Po. I think Lee made the statement more because he wanted to say in a high-profile way that he is quitting for good,” said Tang.
Even though Lee has called it quits, the case of the missing booksellers will remain an unsolved mystery for a long while yet.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1930954/fact-or-fiction-lee-pos-pledge-quit-banned-book-business
