MCLC: Bei Ling on HK booksellers

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MCLC LIST
Bei Ling on HK booksellers
Source: Sinosphere, NYT (1/19/16)
Q. and A.: Bei Ling on the Missing Hong Kong Booksellers
By LUO SILING
The disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers in recent months has attracted international attention and raised concerns that civil liberties the city retained after its return to Chinese rule in 1997 under the so-called one country, two systems formula might be under threat. That the five men were all connected to Mighty Current Media, a publisher of exposés on Communist Party leaders, has led to suspicions that the Chinese authorities might have played a role.
Three of the men — Lu Bo, Zhang Zhiping and Lin Rongji — went missing on the Chinese mainland in October. That same month, Gui Minhai, a co-owner of Mighty Current, vanished in Thailand.
This prompted Bei Ling, an exiled Chinese poet and co-founder of the Independent Chinese PEN Center who has known Mr. Gui for more than 30 years, to contact other friends to investigate. Their findings were released last month in a report titled “The Mysterious Disappearance of an Author and Publisher,” in which Mr. Bei concludes that Mr. Gui, a Swedish national, was probably abducted and taken to China.
The day after the report was published, Mr. Bei learned that a fifth man, Lee Bo, an editor at Mighty Current, had gone missing in Hong Kong. Mr. Lee later phoned his wife from a mainland number to say that he was assisting in an investigation, though there was no record of his having crossed the border.
In an interview, Mr. Bei discussed the five men’s fate and why Hong Kong became a center for provocative publications about the Chinese political elite.
Q. After Mr. Gui went missing, you and your friends conducted an investigation. Why?
A. This incident represents a serious threat to the freedom of press and the dignity of writers in Hong Kong. I intended this report to be read not only by Chinese, but by the world in general. After it was translated into English, Gui’s relatives delivered it to the Swedish Foreign Ministry in the hope it could provide assistance. They also delivered it to International Publishers Association, PEN International, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Freedom House, PEN American Center, etc.
Q. When did you first meet Mr. Gui? What kind of writer and publisher is he?
A. Around the summer of 1984. He was a history major at Peking University. I remember very clearly how he introduced himself. He said, “I’m a modern-style poet.” He has always been a prolific writer. But in 2006, he stopped writing academic and literary essays and turned instead to the power struggles in the top circles of the Communist Party and the lives of senior officials. Around 2010, Gui moved to Hong Kong and founded several publishing houses. He published books about the inner workings of Chinese politics and the private lives of former Chinese leaders. They had titles like “Mistresses of the Chinese Communist Party,” “Secrets of Wives of Chinese Communist Party Officials” and “Women of the Shanghai Clique.” Every month his publishing houses put out four or five books. About a third of the books on Chinese elite politics published in Hong Kong came from him.
Q. What about Mr. Lee?
A. Lee Bo publishes not just political books, but literary books as well, because he is in charge of the Hong Kong Literature/Arts Publication. His publishing career goes back even further than Gui’s. They held joint ownership of the Causeway Bay Bookstore and Mighty Current Media.
It’s hard to believe this kind of thing would happen in Hong Kong. It’s struck fear into the whole Hong Kong community. In my view, this is a sign that the foundation for the stable order of Hong Kong society — “one country, two systems” — is on the brink of collapse.
Q. It’s rumored that the five men’s disappearance has to do with a book they planned to publish on President Xi Jinping’s love life.
A. Ever since Gui’s disappearance, we’ve been hearing this rumor. But, first, to my knowledge, the printing house in partnership with him never received a commission for the book. Second, Gui and Lee Bo never said publicly they would publish such a book. Third, so far nobody knows anything about the author or contents of the book. If it’s true that this book was the main reason why security officials orchestrated their “disappearance,” this would be the epitome of a rule of terror in the ruthless manner of [Russia’s president, Vladimir V.] Putin.
Q. In your report you say that Mr. Gui was kidnapped in Thailand by a mysterious agent, and that he probably was secretly transported to China. How did you get hold of evidence such as the surveillance video?
A. The apartment building where Gui lived and the public spaces in that neighborhood all had full-time security cameras. It was local friends of Gui who went to the apartment and obtained the video recording from the building management office. In my report, I mention some of these friends who agreed to allow their names to be disclosed, such as the writer Meng Lang and the political exile Li Fang.
On the 15th day after Gui’s disappearance in Thailand, four mysterious visitors entered his apartment. Gui then made a call to Ms. Mai, the manager of the apartment building, and told her these four men were his friends and could spend a night in his apartment. It’s likely that when he made that call he had already lost his freedom. The visitors then took away his passport, copied all the files in his computer and finally even tried to take away the computer, too. And they would have taken it away, if the building management had not stopped them and made them hand it over.
Q. What was their motive in publishing books about the private lives of Chinese politicians? Was it just to make money, or do they have a political goal, possibly to bring down the Chinese government?
A. I think the basic reason is the absence of press freedom in China, let alone an environment where writers needn’t fear to write such books. Consequently, these forbidden books attract a great deal of interest from millions of Chinese and have created a huge market. According to my estimates, about half of the books published in Hong Kong are on politics and cultural topics banned in China. These include books containing analyses of topics such as internal struggles within the party elite. There are also lurid accounts of the love affairs of senior party members and their mistresses’ memoirs.
Such forbidden books can be found in bookstores, newsstands and airport shops all over Hong Kong. The customer base reaches almost a million a month, because every year hundreds of millions of people from China come to Hong Kong either on a tour or to make a flight connection. The severe restrictions on information in China, and its huge number of readers, makes Hong Kong the perfect venue for vendors of banned political books, so it’s natural for people like Gui to start a business there. Aside from making money, their aim is simply to make people more aware of the realities of the Chinese state. From what I know of Gui and Lee, publishing is their job. The idea that they want to use banned books to overthrow the Chinese government is simply a figment of someone’s imagination.
Q. In the three years since Mr. Xi came to power, have there been more restraints on speech and press in Hong Kong?
A. The owner of Chenzhong Book Store in Hong Kong, Yiu Mantin, was arrested in Shenzhen [in 2014] and sentenced to 10 years on a charge of smuggling industrial chemicals. Chenzhong Book Store is known for publishing many books exposing party secrets.
If we look back, we see that since the time of Jiang Zemin, there’s been a steady stream of books on the private lives of Chinese Communist leaders. For example, we can cite a dozen books that center on an affair between Jiang Zemin and the popular singer Song Zuying. And yet in that period, we didn’t hear of anyone being abducted in Hong Kong or jailed in the mainland.
The situation remained generally the same under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. For example, in 2010, New Century Press in Hong Kong published a book by the Beijing-based writer Yu Jie titled “China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao,” criticizing Wen as a political hypocrite. Then, in 2012, Chenzhong Book Store published a book by the same author called “Hu Jintao: Harmony King,” which describes Hu Jintao as keeping a low profile on the international stage while cracking down on domestic opposition more severely than his predecessors.
But despite this, the owners of these two publishing houses were not abducted and taken to the mainland. And one of them, Yiu Mantin, could still move freely in and out of Shenzhen.
By contrast, under Xi Jinping, the intolerance of the leadership for books about the inside workings of the party published in Hong Kong’s free society has reached new levels, to the extent that they would order the abduction of political writers and their publishers across borders. Such actions do point to the rise of a nationwide reign of terror.
Q. What effect do you think the publishers’ disappearances will have on press freedoms and politics in Hong Kong?
A. As a Chinese saying puts it, “Diseases in the lip lead to diseases in the teeth.” Without doubt this event will have a chilling effect on the overall publishing and political environment and depress the industry centered on banned books. Lee Bo’s publishing house prepared a book called “2017: Upheaval in China,” which contains predictions about the political changes that might occur around the time of the 19th Communist Party congress. In fact, the book’s printing had been completed when Lee went missing. On hearing what happened to Lee, the book’s author was frightened and immediately demanded that the book contract be canceled. The printing agency was also frightened and proceeded to destroy the copies that were ready for publication.
So this shows that even though freedom of the press formally exists in Hong Kong, people are likely to practice more self-censorship in the days to come. It’s also notable that, in reaction to recent events, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, expressly affirmed that the “one country, two systems” principle cannot be challenged. So we see that this matter has unsettled Hong Kong’s political foundations and made Hong Kong people more anxious about their city’s future.
Q. Will the market and materials for gossip-mongering books continue to expand as Mr. Xi’s anticorruption campaign goes on?
A. Under Xi Jinping, Wang Qishan has waged a severe, no-nonsense fight against corruption. As Caixin Media, Caixin Weekly Journals and other media outlets released more and more reports on the dissolute ways of Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, Ling Jihua and other former senior officials, it sparked ordinary Chinese citizens’ curiosity. So I do think the demand for political gossip books will expand as Xi’s anticorruption campaign continues. No matter how bad the situation of the publishing industry in Hong Kong, there will be people who will take risks to publish such books. As long as current freedoms remain in place, Hong Kong will remain the center for forbidden books on Chinese politics. I imagine that only if mainland China grants freedom of the press will the publishing of books on Chinese politics really decline in Hong Kong.
This article was adapted from a feature that first appeared on the Chinese-language site of The New York Times.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on January 19, 2016
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