China welcomes back diaspora

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Only then would Lam be allowed to return to work in his bookstore — but as a mole, the “eyes and ears” of the investigation. He would report who bought which books, documenting each client and sale through text and photos. Lam agreed to the proposal immediately. “After being in prison for so long,” he said, “I was used to their way of thinking.”...........

Other Mighty Current employees had been spotted in the city, but none spoke about their experience, and when they did, they parroted the same talking points: that their stay on the Chinese mainland had been voluntary and they were now helping authorities with an important case. It was Lam who put words to what the city had feared and suspected all along.

“It can happen to you, too,” Lam said.

Nobody is safe under totalitarianism, not even ethnic Chinese. In fact, many of their targets are the Chinese people.

Of all the city’s rebellious publishers, why was Mighty Current targeted? Did the company insult Xi personally? Perhaps fittingly, there are few facts, but boundless speculation. “Our popularity could not be allowed,” Lam told me. “It caught up to us.”

Xi, the serial kidnapper.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/maga ... 53MBNBpn3g

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“I think Hong Kong will return to China,” he told me. “They have the guns, the jails. We have nothing here in Hong Kong. All we can do is protest peacefully and try to make the world pay attention.”.........

“What you’re doing is writing an obituary,” Bao, the New Century publisher, told me when we met in November. “A post-cremation obituary of these books.” He seemed almost shellshocked by the swiftness of the industry’s downfall. “I didn’t realize it could all disappear so quickly.”

And it can happen very swiftly, like a domino, taken down one by one.