Los Angeles Times - 07.09.2019

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THE WORLD

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Lam
Wing Kee shields himself in a
sunhat like a lot of Taipei
dwellers as he walks across
sun-splashed plazas in the
95-degree heat. Further
blending in, the 63-year-old
drinks coffee in the Taiwan-
ese capital’s cheap breakfast
bars, and later in the day he
might check out the city’s
ever-popular bookstores.
Lam is no ordinary
Taipei guy. He’s a core rea-
son behind the summer of
protests in Hong Kong — a
string of events that have
put the city on edge and
turned eyes toward Beijing
as it marshals paramilitary
troops just outside the terri-
tory.
The Hong Kong citizen is
wanted by mainland China
after snubbing an investiga-
tion into his sales of sensitive
books about Chinese lead-
ers. Lam is one of five Hong
Kong booksellers detained
by Chinese authorities in
2015, stirring concern that
Beijing was curtailing free-
dom of expression in the for-
mer British colony that it
took over in 1997. Chinese in-
vestigators had released
Lam into Hong Kong, after
eight months of detention,
to allow him to retrieve his
computer and mobile
phone, and then go back to
China. But he never went
back. And Hong Kong
couldn’t force him to go, be-
cause it lacks an extradition
law.
Then in February, Hong
Kong leaders proposed just
such a law, eventually spark-
ing the protests that have
raged since June with in-
creasing levels of violence.
Under the proposed law,

Beijing would technically be able to extradite Hong Kong citizens, who are used to freedom of speech, and pros- ecute them for any anti- Communist Party views. Lam escaped to Taiwan in April. “I’m a bit worried now, because they won’t nec- essarily let me go back in,” Lam said in an interview last week. Hong Kong’s chief execu- tive said Wednesday that she would drop the proposed extradition law, mak- ing it safer for Lam to return. But he still faces the threat of arrest, a tool that Hong Kong authorities are already using to stop protests. About 1,100 protest-linked arrests have been made so far, demonstration organ- izer Joshua Wong estimated Tuesday while himself trav- eling in Taipei. “It helps to placate people’s outrage,” Lam said

when he heard about the extradition law being dropped. “But what Hong Kong people worry about most now is abuse of police power and no guarantee of personal safety.” Lam said his case began when undercover Chinese agents visited his bookshop, Causeway Bay Books. The career bookseller founded the store, located in a dense commercial district popular with tourists, in 1994 and sold it to the local publisher Mighty Current Media Co. in

He stayed on as store
manager.
“They had sneaked into
my bookstore to look,” he
speculated. “A bookstore af-
ter all is open to the public.”
Lam said that in the past
he would take books into
mainland China and mail
them from there to custom-
ers. After China asked him in
2012 to stop that, he mailed

some from Hong Kong. His store also got customers visiting Hong Kong from mainland China. A title that mentioned the private lives of Chinese leaders — forbidden on the mainland itself — earned about $3.83 million across all sales channels, Lam said. In 2015, Lam was pulled aside while crossing from Hong Kong into the mainland Chinese city of Shen- zhen and taken to a detention center in Ningbo, near Shanghai, where he said the windows were so high he couldn’t see out. He lived alone there for five months before being moved to a hotel in Guang- dong province for another three. Lam said he was inter- rogated “viciously” several times a week. Lam said Chinese police ultimately let him back into Hong Kong to get his com-

puter, figuring it would con- tain files useful for their in- vestigation. He checked into a hotel, as agreed with Chi- nese authorities, but shortly after that, in June 2016, Lam said at a news conference that he would not return to the mainland. As the protests unfolded in June 2019, Lam said he was surprised only by the force- ful police response. “I didn’t expect the Hong Kong gov- ernment would handle things in this way,” he said, accusing the police of being agents for mainland China. Lam’s move to Taipei spotlights Taiwan’s uneasy role in the protests. China claims sovereignty over self- ruled Taiwan and has threatened to eventually take control of it by force, if necessary. Officials in Bei- jing resent Taiwan Presi- dent Tsai Ing-wen for refus- ing to accept Taiwanese

unity with China — and for speaking out in support of Hong Kong’s pro-democ- racy demonstrators. “Mainland China wants unification, that’s clear,” Lam said. “They’ll try to get Taiwan after Hong Kong.” During his visit this week, Wong urged Taiwanese to hold protests of their own as a show of support for activ- ists in Hong Kong. And, noting that Taiwan also has no immigration laws that would let Lam seek political asylum. Wong said he came to push for one. “Proactive help from Tai- wan for Hong Kong, I be- lieve, would earn the support of common Hong Kong people,” Wong said at a Taipei news conference Tuesday after urging legisla- tors to pass an asylum bill that’s stuck in parliament. Lam said he doesn’t expect the asylum bill to pass, because of China itself. “I think a lot of Taiwanese would oppose it,” he said. “They worry mainland Chi- nese would use Hong Kong as a base to apply for asylum. Some would be fakes.” He said he plans to travel to a book fair in Germany in October and return to Tai- wan on a new tourist visa. Without a path to asylum, he said, he could live like that indefinitely if it remained unsafe for him to reenter Hong Kong. His wife, two grown sons and an older sis- ter still live in his homeland. Lam said he visits Taipei’s bookstores partly to grasp the market in Taiwan, which like Hong Kong is eth- nic Chinese and Chinese lan- guage-literate, but with little interest in the private lives of communist leaders. His next move — a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for his own Taiwan bookstore — raised more than $110,000 in a single day on Friday.

Jennings is a special correspondent.

Bookseller fears returning to Hong Kong

BOOKSELLERLam Wing Kee, who fled to Taiwan from Hong Kong in April, is wanted by mainland China.

Sam YehAFP/Getty Images

Though proposal for

extradition by Beijing

is dropped, he still

faces threat of arrest.

By Ralph Jennings

Los Angeles Times - 07.09.2019

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