Benedict Rogers in WSJ: China Imprisons a Swedish Bookseller
The sentencing of bookseller Gui Minhai to 10 years in Chinese prison is another example of the Chinese Communist Party’s willingness to trample on the rule of law and thumb its nose at the world. The Chinese-born Mr. Gui is a Swedish citizen, yet China has forced him to renounce his rights as a foreigner. Sweden’s diplomats were barred from observing his trial and have been denied consular access.
Mr. Gui is also a Hong Kong resident, but the city’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam has washed her hands of him. Three years ago she said it “would not be appropriate” for her to raise his case, or that of others from Hong Kong detained in the mainland, with the Chinese authorities.
Mr. Gui’s ordeal began with his apparent kidnapping five years ago in Thailand, where he has a second home. A few months later he appeared on Chinese state television, “confessing” involvement in a fatal traffic accident that allegedly occurred more than a decade earlier.
Since then he has mostly been held incommunicado in Ningbo, China. He spent two years in prison, and then a few months in some form of house arrest. Swedish diplomats negotiated his release in 2018, and were with him on a train to Beijing when he was abducted again. Two years later, he has been sentenced, for “illegally providing intelligence” to “overseas” parties—a far cry from a traffic accident.
Why was Mr. Gui targeted? In Hong Kong, he ran a publishing house and bookshop that sold books about China’s top leaders. Some criticized Chinese politics and others were more salacious and gossipy. These books were banned in China, and so people came to buy them in Hong Kong, where they weren’t illegal and still technically aren’t. Mr. Gui, together with Lam Wing-kee, Lee Bo, Lu Bo and Zhang Zhiping, ran a thriving business in Causeway Bay. The booksellers disappeared, one by one, in 2015, though all except Mr. Gui were eventually released.
Three days after Mr. Gui’s sentencing in Ningbo, three key pro-democracy leaders, media mogul Jimmy Lai and former legislators Lee Cheuk-yan and Yeung Sum, were arrested early in the morning by Hong Kong police on spurious charges of participating in “illegal assembly.” Unlike Mr. Gui, they were released after a few hours and will appear in court in May with legal representation.
In recent years other foreigners have been detained in China in cruel and illicit ways for political reasons—British businessman Peter Humphrey, Swedish activist Peter Dahlin, Taiwanese activist Li Ming-che, and Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. But Gui’s case reveals that Beijing is prepared to reach across borders, across diplomatic norms and far beyond legal limits to silence critics.
The world’s democracies need to wake up to the danger. Sweden has primary responsibility for securing Mr. Gui’s release, but its leverage is limited, and the case threatens the whole international world order.
Benedict Rogers is the co-founder and Chair of Hong Kong Watch. The article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on 4 March 2020.